Isn’t your 2.5% is effectively 1.5%, since you get 1% back?
This is not limited to Swisscard. My other credit card, which is from Bonuscard does the same thing as well. 1.75% for any purchases on these international retailers. Which is very annoying, e.g. Booking.com, Uber, etc.
For now I don’t know how to mitigate the issue.
Use another Card for such transactions? There is no other solution if you use Swisscard.
I have a few other cards, but for instance Bonuscard (which was aquired few years back by Corner) does the same, started about half an year ago.
Is there a list we can make to understand where such charges are applied ?
Is it consistent across credit card suppliers ?
I don’t see such charges for Uber or. Booking using Certo one.
poinz app promotes a Zalando eGift with 5% cashback. Would be interesting to see if the 2.5% are there applied as well…
Anatomy of a credit card rewards program by Patrick McKenzie has fascinating details about how these incentives are designed. After reading this, I wouldn’t be surprised if the list is regularly randomized (and never communicated) for maximum profit.
He also links to great stories about forced/manufactured spending and the pudding guy 
I track my expenses with YNAB and record every single transaction, including those on the Cashback Card. Unfortunately, I have to say that the Swisscard app is pretty impractical for this. When I open the app, I can see the current balance (“Aktuelles Saldo”). However, only the transactions that have been booked are counted there, which can take a few days. So far so okay, I can enter unbooked transactions in YNAB (“uncleared transactions”). But the problem is: That is not consistent at all. Sometimes the Swisscard app already counts transactions towards the current balance that are still showed as unbooked, sometimes not.
It has to be said that this is the first real credit card I have owned. I’m used to prepaid credit cards or debit cards, such as Revolut, Yuh or Neon. There the transactions count towards the account balance immediately (but can be adjusted afterwards, which hardly ever happens).
This is not a question, just a short review.
I circumvent that problem by doing budget at beginning of the following month all at once. When you export a .csv from Swisscard you can define a date range and this includes then also Pending transactions (which I book at the day of spending in my budget; not day of settling).
But that requires that you still remember what the individual transactions were at the end of the month. This would be hard if you do a very fine-grained budget (I don’t).
When I checked the moneyland comparisons were mentioning those fees (which is why I went with cumulus/certo, I don’t want to have those surprises).
If you’re interested in credit card arbitrage “academically”, have a listen to https://open.spotify.com/episode/2r9hsavcYsYYLCKs4c6ruU?si=e6874a581f244dd9
Great episode from “Half Kelly Media” (Risk of Ruin podcast/substack) with a guy who really dives into maximizing points in the USA.
I’ve tried optimizing and concluded that with Swiss regulations it’s not in any way worth my time for now, so gave up. 
Thanks, listened to the intro now, that’s perfect, thanks!
Edit: Now finished listening. His guests don’t typically go to court at all
I would love such a list, but I fear that it is really not going to be consistent.
I have experimented a bit with my Swisscard cashback cards and noticed that for the same vendor, they applied the 2.5% with the AMEX but not with the Visa. Talk about consistency 
I see. This issue can be due to AMX too.
For Certo I didn’t see such costs for Uber and SBB at least
SBB doesn’t lead to any costs on AMX though or am I missing something?
No, at least not for tickets and subscriptions (GA, Halbtax, etc.) at their counters, ticket machines, or online. Buying other stuff (like value cards) at their machines may incur costs.
Swisscard charged me a 2.5% fee on my EasyJet booking paid in CHF. Cancelling my Amex asap.
Because the fee works as follows:
I understand the concept, but since the processor is not transparent, it’s a scam for me. I don’t support it and it’s not worth the cashback.
I agree. I actually don’t understand how this is legal as the consumer can’t always determine the applied fee in advance.
I had to buy a ticket with easyjet as well. I think I paid it with Neon. It’s not that that single 1% will change my life.
Tbh. my Amex is giving me back less than 50chf per year so I wonder if it’s worth the hassle. I need a CC though, in case other cards don’t work…but picking an AMEX alone is not a good choice just for that 