Quote:
Originally Posted by After Shock Media
POS = at a cash register. (Point of Sale)
ATM = Automatic Teller Machine.
Regardless the card issuers decide to exchange rate and not the ATM or POS machines. Those machines just have a set per transaction fee. Any exchange rates are set by the card issuers by assorted agreements with the banks. Thought it is all to easy and common to blame the machine's. Primarily because for way to long it seems like the machines were jacking people with free transactions for cards their bank issued, and other rates for non bank cards. Even worse is some convenience stores or places like Vegas would charge a very high transaction rate or a minimum percentage, and even charge this amount when you checked your balance.
If you do not believe me locate and ask some people that own and operate their own ATM machines or have a store with POS ability.
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You are correct, except you missed a few things in the game.
Depending on the system used, there may be "intersystem fees", and other transactional fees depending on the bank and network that the ATM or POS terminal is attached to. The amount removed from your epass account is normally the amount requested (local currency) converted to US dollars (plus a percentage fee by epass, like banks do when you exchange money).
Now, if ask the remote bank for 20 euros, and the remote bank charges you a 20 euro fee for using a foreign debit card or for a non-system card, they would request 40 euros plus ATM fee from Epass, who would in turn convert that to US and deduct it from your account. Epass would have no direct way to know what part of the transaction is fees and what part of the transaction is actual amounts spent.
Judging by the fact that the amounts charged look remarkably the same, I would suspect that some group of european banks have started to charge per transaction fee similar to what they charge to cash US checks.