Thinking About Money

I have a new favorite credit card. A while back I noted the advantages of the Diner’s Club Mastercard for those who rent cars frequently (it offers primary insurance coverage on rentals) – demonstrating that one great feature can be enough in some cases to justify one card over another, even if the card has an annual fee.

Recently I found another card that offers a compelling and unique feature, in this case with the added benefit of no annual fee (in fact, it’s provides cash back). It’s the Capital One “No Hassle Cash” Rewards card.

Not only is the card free, but with a 2% rebate on gas and most groceries and a 1% rebate on all other purchases, it’s one of the most generous of the cash back cards.

But that’s not what got me interested in this card. Nope, the beauty of this card is hidden in the fine print of the disclosure form. It says:

Foreign transaction fee: None.

Once upon a time, credit cards were absolutely the best way to buy things when traveling abroad. Not only did you get the best possible exchange rate, but there were no hidden charges. But card companies in their search for fees couldn’t resist the urge to tamper with a good thing and started slapping on all kinds of fees, not only using retail exchange rates but adding fees – some as high as 4%, on each foreign exchange transaction. Even traveler friendly companies like American Express jumped on the high fee bandwagon.

Capital One is the only bank I know of that continues to use the wholesale conversion rate and charge no additional transaction fees. www.capitalone.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 3:14 am and is filed under Credit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.