Transactions abroad - UBS 1.75% - Visa Credit Card

Hello,

It is a way to avoid paying the 1.75% of processing surcharge ?

UBS is charging this surcharge on my various purchases outside Switzerland like Netflix, Spotify or AliExpress.

How can I avoid this surcharge ? With Revolut ?

Thanks for your help.

Hello, yes personally i use Revolut.

Yes, Revolut. Just be careful that Revolut is prepaid card. It won’t be accepted in car rental, some hotels and some airlines.

You can try this services:

  • Neon (Swiss IBAN) - Prepaid Credit Card (MasterCard)
  • CSX (Swiss IBAN) - Crédit Suisse - Debit Card (MasterCard)
  • Revolut

Beware with Revolut you have a 1% majoration if you purchased on the Saturday and Sunday :wink:

No surcharge if you exchanged some funds into the respective currency before the weekend.

WRONG.
You pay more only if you exchange money on those days. Simply leave some usd/eur on your account or exchange them the week before.

This is what I intended to say. If you just have CHF and you want to purchase something abroad in EUR or USD, you will have this 1% majoration, right ? Or am I missunderstand something here ?

Not sure if it’s 1% or more. It depends from the currency.

from monito :slight_smile:

You can google all of it… Btw it’s UK time that you have to check… You might be already in weekend time and you don’t even know :slight_smile:

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I personally pay Spotify with my Amex Cashback card and there are no extra fees.

Well, UBS takes more than an additional 1% compared to whatever the actual currency exchange rate would be on top of the 1.75% in commission (they basically have a large spread). So, Revolut > UBS even on weekends but for the specific use case of exchanging on weekends there are better offers than Revolut.

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I‘d recommend Neon or Transferwise, as per our previous discussion

I personally would not use Revolut, I heard too many bad things to trust them with my money. Neon is hardly more expensive and has other advantages. Transferwise is a bit more expensive, but again with other advantages.

I do not want to use a free product from a company of which I do not understand how it generates a profit.

Revolut burns VC cash, they‘re not making profit.

I really like Revolut, Neon and ZAK. But I fail to see how such a business model should work longterm.

Nothing of true value is really freee.

Neon is making some money with fees, low and transparent ones. Don‘t know if that is going to be enough. ZAK does not need to make money, the idea is to upsell clients other services. Again, no idea if that will work. Doesn‘t work with me (I like them, however, more than Neon so far for the account itself. Neon‘s card is better though).

Transferwise is making a profit afaik.

Revolut is the odd one out. Their fees seem to be too low to be sustainable and their customer service and reliability are horrible from what I hear.

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My firsthand experience with their customer service, on the other hand, was only positive.
I guess there will be many anecdotal evidence for both sides.

They don’t seem unsustainable to me, premium isn’t cheap and the free tiers have limits. There are lots of free prepaid credit card on the market and that doesn’t seem unsustainable either (revolut has just better marketing, an app, and some extra features like the favorable FX, but I don’t think it’s that expensive).

IIRC they earn some money on payment commissions, and they don’t give cashback at least on the free tier.

Let’s see. They are cheapest overall, so most under pressure to make it work with what little fees they get.

I am risk adverse and the negative feedback is bad enough for me not to risk my money with them. Use case would be bank transfers and credit card for non-Swiss transactions, a few thousand CHF per year. Too much to trust them with it. I am using Neon (full Swiss bank account, bank license and deposit insurance, barely more expensive) and Transferwise (still cheap, longer track record, profitable) instead.

Thanks for all your contributions !

So reading all your messages, there is no simple answer :sweat_smile:

I will dig into the different options.