Quote:
Originally Posted by RawAlex
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.
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That would be a very shitty thing to do actually. The reason why banks over here charge for cashing USD checks is because they're being processed manually. Plus, of course, they do add a mark-up on that. Still, charging the same fee for POS or ATM withdrawals would be really shitty. Especially since ?20+ for it would be grossly overpriced, most banks will charge about half that to cash in a USD check.