The machine gives me no way to decline the conversion. What now?

Last verified 22 August 2026 · by the NoDCC editorial desk

Short answer. No. A conversion screen that gives you no way to decline breaks Visa's and Mastercard's own rules. Mastercard's merchant guide states that automatic DCC is not permitted by Mastercard Standards, and that where you make no billing-currency choice the transaction must be completed in the local currency. Visa's rulebook requires the machine to tell you the conversion is optional, forbids pre-selecting it, and requires your express agreement on a customer-facing screen. Photograph the screen, cancel if you still can, and use a machine run by a different operator.

Is a screen with no decline option actually allowed?

No. Both Visa and Mastercard forbid it in their own rulebooks, and neither leaves much room to argue.

Mastercard's merchant guide puts it in one sentence: automatic DCC is not permitted by Mastercard Standards. Its processing rules add that no currency conversion method may be implemented as the default option, and that where you do not choose to have the transaction completed in your billing currency, it must be completed and processed in the local currency.

So a machine that converts because it never asked has broken the rule twice. Conversion was the default, and your silence should have produced local currency.

Visa's rulebook is addressed to merchants and ATM acquirers rather than to you, and it is no softer. Anyone offering DCC must inform you that it is optional, must not use language or procedures such as pre-selecting the DCC option, and must ensure that you expressly agree. In a card-present setting that agreement has to come from you, on a customer-facing screen or handheld device. A footnote applies the same rule to ATM acquirers offering DCC on cash withdrawals.

Everything on this page is Visa and Mastercard. American Express runs its own network: it tells its own cardholders that overseas merchants offer to charge them in their home currency, and its own payment gateway offers conversion on Visa, Mastercard and Maestro card types only.

One thing this is not. If the price was already set in a foreign currency before you presented a card, that is multi-currency pricing rather than DCC, and no dynamic conversion happens. The rules against pre-selecting a currency and against making the local currency harder to pay in still apply. At an ATM dispensing local cash, the distinction does not arise.

What exactly do the rules say the machine must do?

Seven duties, taken from Visa's rulebook and Mastercard's processing rules as posted on 22 August 2026, plus Mastercard's 2025 merchant guide, which carries no printed effective date.

Tell you the conversion is optional. Visa rule 5.8.9.2 requires the merchant, ATM acquirer or branch to inform you that DCC is optional. Mastercard's processing rules require that you be clearly informed you have the right to choose the currency.
Not pre-select it. Visa names pre-selecting the DCC option as exactly the kind of procedure that may cause you to choose DCC by default, and forbids it. Mastercard's wording is flatter: "No specific currency conversion method may be implemented as the default option".
Show the warning screen, word for word. At an unattended terminal, an ATM or an online checkout, Mastercard requires a specified warning to appear verbatim, opening "MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND THE COSTS OF CURRENCY CONVERSION" and going on to say that those costs may differ depending on whether you pick your home currency or the transaction currency. It is the one piece of mandated on-screen wording you can check against the machine in front of you.
Take your PIN last. Resolving a worked case, Mastercard's 2025 guide states that PIN entry must always be the last step in the transaction, following your choice of currency. A machine that took your PIN before it mentioned currency ran the steps in the wrong order.
Take your express agreement, from you. Visa requires the cardholder to expressly agree by directly interfacing with a customer-facing screen or handheld acceptance device. A terminal turned away from you, or a clerk tapping the choice on your behalf, does not meet that.
Not make local currency harder. Visa forbids imposing any additional requirement on you to have the transaction processed in the local currency. Mastercard forbids steering by any means, and its 2025 guide names the tactics: yes or no framing, accept or decline framing, red and green traffic-light buttons, highlighting or preselecting the conversion, and re-offering it on a second screen after you have already chosen local currency.
Honour what you chose, or fall back to local. Mastercard requires the merchant and terminal to honour your currency selection, and requires the transaction to be completed in the local currency if you make no billing-currency choice.

Quote the rulebook, not the brochure. Visa's traveller-facing page says merchants and ATMs "should give you a choice". The rulebook says the merchant must ensure the cardholder expressly agrees. If you are writing to your bank, the second one is the sentence that carries weight.

Two honest limits before you argue detail. Visa's public rules delegate its own on-screen layout to a separate DCC Guide that Visa does not publish, so no one outside the industry can state Visa's required screen line by line. And Mastercard's own download page warns that the posted documents will not always be absolutely current in all regards, which is why the checked date above matters.

What should I capture before I walk away?

Photograph the screen while it is still on the screen. It is the only evidence that disappears the second you press a button, and the only thing that records what you were not offered.

Get it all in one frame: both amounts, the rate, and the buttons as they were laid out. Then three more things.

Take the receipt, even if the machine offers to skip it. Under Visa's rules a DCC receipt must carry the amount in both currencies with both symbols, the conversion rate, the commission or markup over a wholesale or government-mandated rate, an easily visible statement that you were offered a choice of currencies and expressly agreed, and a statement that the conversion was carried out by the merchant, branch or ATM acquirer rather than by Visa. If the choice-of-currency statement is not there, that omission sits on the acquirer's side of the argument, not yours.
Expect less from a Mastercard receipt. Mastercard's receipt rule requires the local amount, the converted amount, the currency symbol or code of each, and the rate used. Unlike Visa's, it does not list the markup among required receipt content; the markup belongs to the disclosure you should have had before the transaction.
Note the operator name, the location and the time. The conversion is performed by whoever runs the machine, not by Visa or Mastercard, which is why the operator's identity is part of the record.

If you got no receipt, the claim still stands. On Visa what the issuer files is a certification that you did not agree to the conversion and did not make an active choice, and on Mastercard a no-consent claim runs on your letter, message or Form 1240; producing the receipt is the acquirer's problem.

That is where the burden of proving you agreed sits, and it is not on you. Visa's own guidance to merchants tells them that defending this dispute takes evidence that the cardholder actively chose DCC, plus a copy of the receipt. Under Mastercard, an acquirer cannot use that second presentment to argue you agreed to the conversion, and terminal logs are expressly named as no defence. Neither scheme asks you for a photograph. It is for your issuer, so what happened at the machine is on record before you forget it.

Where do I go instead?

A machine run by a different operator. The conversion is offered by whoever runs the terminal or ATM, and that party applies its own exchange rate, so a different operator is a different offer. Visa's receipt rule says as much: the receipt has to state that the conversion was conducted by the merchant, branch or ATM acquirer.

Declining costs you nothing on the transaction itself. In Visa's own words to travellers, opting to accept or decline the conversion will not impact your ability to make purchases or withdraw cash internationally. Finding another machine is a separate cost question: the conversion is only one of the charges inside a withdrawal, and our guide to the four charges covers the rest.

What declining saves is measurable, and the freshest measurement is Czech. In April 2026 Měšec.cz withdrew from ten Prague ATM operators using a German card billed in euro and a Polish card billed in złoty, and compared each conversion rate against the ECB reference rate on the transaction date. On the euro card the markups ran from 6.51% at the cheapest operator to 19.00% at the dearest. Euronet, one of the ten and at 15.00% among the higher ones, reproduced the same table on its own corporate site.

The older European picture is milder. In a 2016 test reported by the consumer group BEUC in 2017, Stiftung Warentest sent 20 investigators to make withdrawals and payments in 13 non-euro countries; where DCC was used, the price the consumer paid rose by 2.6% to 12%, with in-store card payments adding 2% to 5%.

Two things not to try.

Do not ask your bank to switch DCC off. Mastercard's guide states that issuers cannot control whether DCC is performed, and that blocking it outright would prevent card acceptance and violate Mastercard Standards. The exclusions that do exist are product-level: acquirers are prohibited from offering DCC on prepaid travel cards and multi-currency debit cards, and Visa bars it on cards enabled with the Visa Multi-Currency Solution and on travel prepaid cards including Visa TravelMoney.
Do not assume the amount menu is neutral. Withdrawal amounts already listed in your home currency are a sign the conversion has been pre-selected before any offer screen appears, which is itself against both rulebooks. The screen-by-screen playbook covers that flow and the terminal wordings that go with it.

DCC is now permitted on Visa cards at ATMs worldwide, which is why standalone and airport machines can offer it where once they could not. Visa had confined DCC on its cards to the point of sale and to intraregional ATM transactions in Europe, and lifted that restriction for international ATM transactions worldwide from 13 April 2019. That is trade-press reporting rather than a Visa announcement, so treat the date as reported.

Which operators run the machines varies by country. Our country pages carry that per destination, alongside the refusal phrase in the local language.

Does reporting it achieve anything?

For your own money, sometimes. For the machine, slowly and invisibly.

Visa's advice to travellers stops at declining the conversion and reporting the incident to your card issuer. It promises no refund. Behind that advice sits a dispute route in each network's rules, and the two differ enough that the wrong assumption costs you the claim.

Network	Route	Time limit	How much
Visa	Dispute Condition 12.3, Incorrect Currency, where DCC occurred without express agreement or you were refused the choice of local currency	120 calendar days from the transaction processing date, which is the clearing date and not the day you paid	The entire transaction amount at the chargeback stage; at pre-arbitration it is capped at the difference
Mastercard	Currency Errors, inside Point-of-Interaction Error, message reason code 4834 on the dual message system, or 34 for a Debit Mastercard on the single message system	ATM cases: 120 calendar days from the central site business date, for intra-European and inter-European ATM and Maestro transactions. All other non-ATM dual message transactions: 90 calendar days	The difference only, excluding your own issuer's conversion

One trap sits inside the Mastercard row, and it is the trap for this page's reader. That chargeback covers ATM transactions only where a Europe-issued card was used at an ATM located in Europe. Every other ATM case goes through a pre-compliance case and, if it is rejected, a compliance case, which must be filed before 120 calendar days of the transaction's central site business date or settlement date have passed. So a withdrawal converted at an ATM outside Europe has no 90-day chargeback window; it has a 120-day compliance clock.

None of it is a right you hold. The UK's Financial Ombudsman Service, writing about chargebacks in general rather than about currency conversion, states plainly that a bank or lender does not have to raise one and that chargebacks can fail. Revolut's help centre is the clearest issuer statement we found: it says it can raise a dispute where you rejected the conversion and it was applied anyway. That is permission, not a promise.

And the machine itself?

Visa may audit acquirers and their merchants for DCC compliance, and may levy a non-refundable non-compliance assessment of up to USD 10,000, or USD 50,000 depending on the nature of the violation. The rule carves out the LAC Region (Chile), where it does not apply. Those are dollar assessments against the acquirer rather than compensation to you, and Visa publishes no register of them, so you are unlikely to hear anything.

Regulators have done less than the internet suggests. We found no published regulator decision, fine or ruling anywhere specifically about DCC screen design. The nearest named case is Hungarian: the competition authority opened case VJ/12/2025 against Euronet Banktechnikai Kft on 7 March 2025, on suspicion that the home screens of its ATMs mislead consumers by surfacing some functions and hiding others, causing avoidable extra cost. That case concerns bundled cash and balance functions rather than currency conversion, the authority stresses that opening a case does not mean an infringement was committed, and as of 22 August 2026 no outcome appears in its press releases.

EU law reaches less far than travellers assume. The duty to express the conversion charge as a percentage markup over the ECB reference rate sits in Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2021/1230, introduced by Regulation (EU) 2019/518. It reaches only payments denominated in euro or in the national currency of a non-euro Member State, so a cardholder billed in dollars in Bangkok is outside it. Where it does apply it asks for more than a percentage: at an ATM or at the point of sale, the party offering the conversion must display the markup there and must also inform you that you can pay in the currency the payee uses and have your own bank convert afterwards. A screen inside that scope that never mentions that option is missing a disclosure the Regulation requires. It is still a disclosure duty though: a breach is a matter for a supervisor, not an automatic refund.

That is being tightened. The European Parliament and Council agreed a payment services package on 27 November 2025 covering pre-transaction information on currency conversion charges and on fixed ATM cash-withdrawal fees, and it still required formal adoption by both when the deal was announced.

What to do about it

Photograph the screen before you press anything, with both amounts, the rate and the buttons in one frame.
Cancel if the machine still lets you, and use a machine run by a different operator.
Keep the receipt. The home-currency amount your bank charged, divided by the local amount on the receipt, is the rate the operator actually gave you; put both amounts into the calculator in exact mode to see how far that rate sits above the reference rate, as a percentage.
Report it to your issuer inside the window. On Visa, 120 days from the processing date. On Mastercard at an ATM, 120 days from the central site business date: a chargeback if a Europe-issued card was used at a European ATM, otherwise a compliance case on the same 120-day clock. Mastercard's 90-day window applies to non-ATM transactions, not to a cash withdrawal.
On Visa, tell your issuer the dispute is Condition 12.3 and that the rule allows the entire transaction amount at the chargeback stage. The issuer decides whether to raise it, and if the case reaches pre-arbitration the rule caps recovery at the difference.

If you are not yet sure the charge was DCC at all, start with how to tell from a statement. If you are sure, what you can claim back covers the claim itself. The refusal card exists so the next machine never gets this far.

Sources

Every factual claim above is checked against a published source. Links go to the document itself, not to a summary of it.

Mastercard, Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) Performance Guide, Merchant Edition, 2025 edition (no printed effective date; dated from its copyright line and file metadata), s.2.5 to s.2.5.3 and the PIN case-study resolution. Automatic DCC not permitted; consent; anti-steering list; default to local currency; PIN entry last; issuers cannot block DCC. mastercard.com ↗
Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.5.8.9.2 (ID# 0003100). The core citation: DCC is optional, no pre-selection, express agreement on a customer-facing screen, no extra friction for local currency, and the ATM-acquirer footnote. usa.visa.com ↗
Mastercard, Transaction Processing Rules, 9 June 2026 (read from the live document), s.3.8, 3.8.1, 3.8.4 and 3.13.1. No default conversion method; right to choose; the verbatim warning screen at unattended terminals, ATMs and e-commerce; terminal must honour the selection; non-choice completes in local currency; receipt shows both amounts, both currency identifiers and the rate. mastercard.com ↗
Using a Credit Card overseas, American Express (Australia), as published 22 August 2026. Amex telling its own cardholders that overseas merchants offer to charge them in their home currency. americanexpress.com ↗
Dynamic Currency Conversion, American Express Payment Gateway integration guidelines, as published 22 August 2026. That gateway supports DCC on Visa, Mastercard and Maestro card types only. It is a product limitation of one gateway, not a statement of Amex network rules, and nothing here says whether Amex's merchant rules address DCC. gateway-na.americanexpress.com ↗
Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.5.8.22.1 and glossary, Multi-Currency Pricing. Distinguishes multi-currency pricing from DCC, and carries the parallel no-pre-selection duty. usa.visa.com ↗
Decoding Dynamic Currency Conversion, Visa Travel consumer page, as published 22 August 2026. The weaker consumer wording ("should give you a choice"), the decline-and-report advice, and the assurance that accepting or declining does not affect your ability to pay or withdraw. visa.com ↗
Mastercard rules and compliance programs, official rules download page. Mastercard's own currency disclaimer on the posted documents, which is why this page carries a checked date. mastercard.com ↗
Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.5.9.2.3 and Table 5-34, DCC row (ID# 0028052). The mandatory DCC receipt contents, including the markup line, the choice-of-currency statement, and the statement naming who conducted the conversion. usa.visa.com ↗
Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.5.9.2.3 / Table 5-34, DCC row (second reading). Same receipt rule, registered separately for the consequence: a DCC receipt that omits the markup line or the choice-of-currency statement is itself non-compliant. usa.visa.com ↗
Mastercard, Transaction Processing Rules, receipt requirements s.3.13.1 and 3.13.2 and pre-transaction disclosure s.3.8.3 (read via an archived copy whose cover date is 9 December 2025). Cited only for the contrast with Visa: the markup is not listed among required receipt content, it belongs to the pre-transaction disclosure. Listed separately from the 9 June 2026 reading above because the two retrievals of this document returned different cover dates; the receipt content quoted on this page is the same in both. mastercard.com ↗
Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.11.9.2 Dispute Condition 12.3, Incorrect Currency. The Visa route, the 120-day limit from the transaction processing date, the entire amount at chargeback and the difference at pre-arbitration, and the issuer certification rather than the cardholder's receipt. usa.visa.com ↗
Mastercard, Chargeback Guide, Merchant Edition, 19 May 2026, Point-of-Interaction Error, Currency Errors. Reason code 4834 and 34 for Debit Mastercard, the 90-day non-ATM and 120-day European ATM windows, difference-only amount, the cardholder letter or Form 1240, and the bar on arguing consent at second presentment. mastercard.com ↗
Visa, Dispute Management Guidelines for Visa Merchants, June 2024, Condition 12.3. What the merchant must produce to defend: evidence the cardholder actively chose DCC, plus the receipt. usa.visa.com ↗
What is Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC)?, Revolut Help Centre, as published 22 August 2026. That the ATM provider applies its own exchange rate if you accept conversion, and that Revolut can raise a dispute where a rejected conversion was applied anyway. help.revolut.com ↗
Turista u českého bankomatu: poplatek, špatný kurz, nebo obojí (test), Měšec.cz, 4 May 2026. April 2026 field test of ten Prague ATM operators with a euro-billed and a złoty-billed card, benchmarked against the ECB reference rate on the transaction date: 6.51% to 19.00% on the euro card. Specialist consumer media, single city, one visit per operator. mesec.cz ↗
Bringing clarity to the conversation about ATM currency conversion charges in Czechia, Euronet Worldwide, 29 June 2026. Corroboration, not an independent measurement: Euronet reproduces the same April 2026 table, including its own 15.00%. euronetatms.com ↗
BEUC, Dynamic Currency Conversion: When paying abroad costs you more than it should, position paper BEUC-X-2017-118, 30 October 2017. BEUC's 2017 report of the 2016 Stiftung Warentest test: 20 investigators, 13 non-euro countries, 2.6% to 12% at ATMs and 2% to 5% in store. The original Stiftung Warentest article is gone, so the figure is verifiable today only through BEUC. beuc.eu ↗
Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.5.8.9.1 (ID# 0025740). DCC must not be offered on Visa Multi-Currency Solution cards or travel prepaid cards including Visa TravelMoney. usa.visa.com ↗
Eye on ATMs: Visa Will Lift Dynamic Currency Conversion Restriction at ATMs, Euronet Says, Digital Transactions, 1 October 2018. Trade press, cited as reported: the 13 April 2019 extension of DCC to international ATM transactions worldwide. digitaltransactions.net ↗
Mastercard, Chargeback Guide, Merchant Edition, 19 May 2026, Chapter 7, ATM Dynamic Currency Conversion and Currency Errors. Non-European ATM DCC cases go to pre-compliance and compliance rather than chargeback, before 120 days of the central site business date or settlement date. mastercard.com ↗
Problems with goods and services: section 75 and chargeback, Financial Ombudsman Service (UK). A bank does not have to raise a chargeback, and chargebacks can fail. The page is about goods and services generally and does not mention currency conversion. financial-ombudsman.org.uk ↗
Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.12.3.3.1 DCC Non-Compliance Assessments (ID# 0030703). Visa may audit acquirers and merchants and assess up to USD 10,000, or USD 50,000 depending on the violation, with the LAC Region (Chile) carve-out. usa.visa.com ↗
ATM network operator under investigation by the GVH, Hungarian Competition Authority, 7 March 2025, case VJ/12/2025. An opened investigation into ATM home-screen design and bundled functions, not a DCC ruling and not a finding. gvh.hu ↗
Press releases index, Hungarian Competition Authority, reviewed 22 August 2026. Negative evidence: no outcome in the Euronet case is published as of the checked date. gvh.hu ↗
Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 on cross-border payments in the Union (codification), Articles 1 and 4. The current text: the percentage markup over the ECB reference rate, the scope limited to payments denominated in a Union currency, and the ATM and point-of-sale duties to display the markup and to tell the payer they can pay in the payee's currency. eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
Regulation (EU) 2019/518 amending Regulation (EC) No 924/2009, Article 3a (repealed 18 August 2021; the substance is now codified in Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2021/1230, cited above). Where the markup-disclosure duty originated, and the point that it is a disclosure duty rather than a refund mechanism. Cited only for origin, never as live law. eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
EUR-Lex metadata record for Regulation (EU) 2019/518 (CELEX 32019R0518). Records 2019/518 as no longer in force from 18 August 2021, repealed by Regulation (EU) 2021/1230. eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
Payment services deal: More protection from online fraud and hidden fees, European Parliament, 27 November 2025. The agreed package covering pre-transaction currency conversion and fixed ATM withdrawal fee information, still to be formally adopted. europarl.europa.eu ↗