Paying VISA cards abroad will be more expensive

“Sberbank” on its website announced the upcoming commission of the commission on March 1 for conducting a conversion on cross -border operations on VISA cards. An increase in tariffs will affect the Visa already issued and future cards and will amount to 0.75-1.5% of the amount of the operation depending on the type of card: the higher the status of the card, the lower the tariff. Until now, this commission was 0.65%, regardless of the type of card.

However, increased commissions will be applied only in cases where the currency of the card account is different from the currency of the operation and if the surgery currency is different from US dollars.

In Sberbank, the upcoming increase is explained by adjusting tariffs to a market level. So, for example, a similar commission on VISA cards in VTB 24 is 2%.

Among large banks, there are many those who do not charge commissions for cross -border operations, in particular, “Credit Europe Bank”, Ubrirs and the Baltic Bank.

Experts explain the need to charge the commission with the growing expenses of banks for multiple envelopes of currencies during cross -border operations. According to the chairman of the board of directors of the Golden Crown, Nikolai Smirnov, so that the foreign store receives payment in the national currency, the Russian issuing bank must first convert funds, as a rule, in dollars or euros, and only then the payment system and the Ecweer Bank to local currency.

Although the internal exchange rate of the bank currencies, according to which funds are converted at the time of payment, an average of 50 kopecks exceeds the official CB, this allowance does not cover the bank’s expenses for multiple envelopes of currencies, Kommersant writes.

Sberbank simply uses its advantage - a large client base, and this even insignificant increase can bring hundreds of millions of dollars of additional revenue to the bank, ”said Dmitry Yanin, the holders of cards in Russia, not too closely monitoring the changes in tariffs.