A foreign website is showing prices in my currency. Is that DCC, and should I switch it?

Last verified 22 August 2026 · by the NoDCC editorial desk

Short answer. Two different things look identical at a foreign checkout. Multi-currency pricing means the merchant has priced its goods in a currency other than its own and no dynamic conversion happens at the payment step; DCC means the price stays in the merchant's currency and a conversion service converts it on your card at a wholesale rate with a markup built in. The exchange rate is the tell: a DCC offer at the payment step has to show both amounts, the rate that would apply and any other fee, while multi-currency pricing quotes you no rate because nothing is being converted there. That tells you which mechanism you are in, not which is cheaper: the merchant sets its own foreign-currency price, and no rule caps the margin inside it.

How do I tell multi-currency pricing from DCC?

Multi-currency pricing is the merchant displaying the price of its goods in a currency other than its own local currency, with no dynamic currency conversion conducted. If that currency happens to be yours, nothing is converted on your card; if it is not, your issuer converts it as it normally would. DCC is the other arrangement: the price stays in the merchant's currency, and a conversion service converts it on your card at a wholesale rate that already has a DCC markup inside it.

Three tells separate them, and you can check all three before you type a card number.

Where the currency sits. Multi-currency pricing is a price list, shown to you while you shop. A DCC offer belongs to the payment step, generated for that one transaction with an exchange rate and an expiry time attached to it.
Whether a rate appears at the payment step. A conversion offer has to show the amount in both currencies, the conversion rate that would apply, and any other fee charged if you take the conversion. Multi-currency pricing quotes no rate at the payment step, because no dynamic conversion is being conducted.
What the merchant owes you either way. Visa bars a merchant offering DCC from putting any additional requirement in your way for having the transaction processed in the local currency. Under the multi-currency pricing rule, where the merchant's own currency is displayed you must be allowed to pay in it, again with no extra requirements.

What you are looking at	Multi-currency pricing	Dynamic currency conversion
Where the currency choice sits	The merchant's own price display, before payment	The payment step, quoted for that transaction
Exchange rate at the payment step	None, because no dynamic conversion is conducted	Required: both amounts, the rate, and any other fee if you take it
Who sets the rate	The merchant, when it set the price. No conversion happens at the payment step, so no rate is quoted to you	The conversion provider: wholesale rate plus a DCC markup
Pre-selecting your currency	Visa's own example of what a merchant must not do	Visa's own example of what a merchant must not do; allowed online by Mastercard only if disclosed and declinable

Which one is cheaper is a separate question, and the mechanism does not answer it. A merchant's own foreign-currency price list is not automatically the better deal: the largest single figure in the airline study below, a 13.03% price increase, was recorded for simply selecting a different currency rather than for DCC.

The rate is the tell, at the payment step. If the payment step quotes your card's billing amount next to the merchant's price, with a rate and usually an expiry, that is a conversion offer on your card, and on a Visa or Mastercard transaction the merchant's own network rules require it to obtain your active choice rather than assume it. A converted figure shown while you browse is not, on its own, evidence of anything. These are network rules binding the merchant through its bank, not rights you can enforce at the checkout.

Where in a checkout does the real offer appear?

It depends on the merchant. The rules put it earlier than you would expect, and the one published test put it as late as possible.

When Which? looked at Ryanair's booking flow, the price switched into pounds at the point where you enter your card details, at the very end of the booking journey. That is one carrier, in an article published in March 2019 that draws on earlier research from March 2018, and it does not establish where any checkout puts the offer today.

Mastercard requires the cardholder to be told, before authorisation is requested, that they have the right to choose the currency, along with the amount in local currency, the amount in the billing currency, the conversion rate to be applied, and any other fee charged if the conversion is taken. Mastercard's merchant guide, which is guidance about the Standards rather than the Standards themselves, puts the same duty before any authorisation or preauthorisation request is submitted. Mastercard also requires a fixed warning about the cost of conversion to be displayed at e-commerce checkouts, as well as at ATMs and unattended terminals.

Two things specific to the online flow

The quote expires. The DCC offer in Visa Acceptance's merchant documentation carries an exchange-rate expiry timestamp, so a checkout left open in a tab can come back with a different number.
Once you authorise, the rate is meant to be fixed. In this card-not-present flow the capture and any refund should reuse the exchange rate from the authorisation, and partial captures and refunds should use the rate received in the DCC response.

Note where the markup sits in all this. Mastercard's pre-authorisation disclosure list covers both amounts, the rate and any other fee charged if you take the conversion; it does not itself require a markup figure on the offer screen. The markup over a wholesale or government-mandated rate is what Visa's receipt rule requires. Visa's public rulebook leaves the mandated on-screen layout to a DCC Guide it does not publish, so we do not claim the markup has to appear on the offer screen itself.

The disclosure is not supposed to disappear once you pay: the confirmation page and the receipt must carry the conversion information the network requires. Visa's receipt rule asks for more than an offer screen does. It requires the amount with currency symbols in both the local and the transaction currency, a labelling word next to the transaction amount, the conversion rate, the commission, fee, markup or margin over a wholesale or government-mandated rate, a statement easily visible to you that you were offered a choice of currencies, and a statement that the conversion was conducted by the merchant, branch or ATM acquirer rather than by Visa. The screen-by-screen version for ATMs and terminals is in the refusal playbook.

Is a pre-selected currency allowed?

Under Visa's rules, no. Visa bars a merchant offering DCC from using any language or procedures that may cause you to choose DCC by default, and gives pre-selecting the DCC option as its own example; it also requires your express agreement. The multi-currency pricing rule carries the same bar, with pre-selecting a currency as the named example. Visa Acceptance puts it to merchants plainly: DCC may not be performed by default, and the customer must be presented with an active choice.

Mastercard is narrower here, and the difference is worth carrying with you. Its processing rules also say no specific currency conversion method may be implemented as the default option, but they carve out the internet: online, a currency conversion option may be pre-selected, provided the cardholder is informed of the pre-selection and provided with the means to decline the conversion.

That carve-out is narrow, and it sits inside a strict regime. Mastercard's merchant guide states that automatic DCC is not permitted by Mastercard Standards, and that DCC must not be applied without the cardholder's consent. The currency options must be presented equally in manner and prominence; the cardholder must not be asked to select yes or no, accept or decline; traffic-light colour patterns such as red and green buttons are barred; and the terminal must not highlight or preselect the DCC option. And if 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 pre-ticked currency is not automatically a breach. On a Visa transaction, pre-selecting is Visa's own example of what a merchant must not do. On a Mastercard transaction it is permitted online only if the page tells you the currency was pre-selected and gives you the means to decline, and even then the options have to be presented equally. Switching back is free of extra hoops: Visa's rules bar a merchant from imposing additional requirements on you to have the transaction processed in its local currency. Free of extra cost is a different question. If the price was genuinely set in your currency, paying in the merchant's currency instead hands the conversion to your issuer, at whatever your cardholder agreement charges.

What the law actually covers online

Everything below is EU and UK law. If you are outside the EEA and the UK, or buying from a merchant outside them, what reaches your transaction is the card networks' own rules, and those bind the merchant through its bank rather than giving you something to enforce at the checkout.

The duty to express conversion charges as a percentage markup over the ECB reference rate was introduced by Regulation (EU) 2019/518, which is no longer in force: it was repealed in 2021, and the duty now sits in Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2021/1230. The operative text addresses payment service providers and parties providing currency conversion services at an ATM or at the point of sale.

In 2019/518, online purchases are contemplated in the recitals rather than in the operative article. Recital 8 says charge information may be given on-screen in the case of online purchases, and might be displayed at the check-out rather than on the payment terminal; recital 11 separately acknowledges payers who regularly use a card for online purchases in the local currency. Recitals are interpretive rather than binding, and we have not checked whether the codified regulation's own recitals say more, so treat this as an argument rather than a rule that squarely binds a foreign webshop. Scope is limited by currency as well: Articles 4 and 5 reach payments denominated in euro or in another Union currency, so a payment denominated in dollars, francs or baht sits outside them entirely.

The wording that comes closest to an online checkout is PSD2 Article 59(2), transposed in the UK as regulation 57 of the Payment Services Regulations 2017: where a currency conversion service is offered before the initiation of the payment transaction at an automatic teller machine or the point of sale, or by the payee, the party offering it must disclose to the payer all charges as well as the exchange rate to be used. The by-the-payee limb is the one written to fit a website's currency selector rather than a terminal, and the wording of Article 59(2) itself carries the same limb. Whether it binds any particular foreign merchant is a separate question this page does not settle: these are UK and EEA instruments with their own territorial scope, and a merchant outside them is not obviously caught.

One more, if software is doing the buying for you. Visa's rulebook carries a rule for agents, stamped as last updated October 2025 in the 18 April 2026 edition, covering a merchant's offer of either DCC or multi-currency pricing: the agent must either provide the details displayed by the merchant and obtain your consent before initiating the transaction, or have obtained consent when your payment instructions were captured.

Does my bank's foreign charge apply either way?

Declining a conversion removes the merchant's side of the cost, not your issuer's. What your own issuer charges for an international transaction is set by your cardholder agreement rather than by the checkout. Visa's rules require an issuer to give complete written disclosure of any fees it may charge for an international transaction, and they allow the Visa rate to be adjusted by an optional issuer fee or by an issuer's own markup applied outside VisaNet. Whether your issuer's fee follows the currency you are billed in or the fact that the merchant is foreign is a matter for that disclosure, not for the merchant's page.

Published figures are thin, and the verified ones here come from a single issuer. American Express UK states a currency conversion fee of 2.99% of the converted value for each foreign currency purchase, and Amex Hong Kong's cardmember notice states a 2% conversion commission. For a wider sense of scale, BEUC's 2017 position paper, sourcing the figure to the Financial Times, contrasts a DCC fee of around 10% in certain cases with a typical bank markup of 0% to 3%.

In 2017 the Norwegian Consumer Council put the payment cards' own standardised markup in that market at 1.75%, against a normal DCC markup of 6% to 7%, which it describes as roughly four times as much. On those numbers it is 3.4 times at the 6% end and 4 times at the 7% end. Those are Norwegian figures from 2017, not a current rate for your card, and Visa's own rules set no fixed scheme markup: the underlying rate is one Visa selects from the range of rates available in wholesale currency markets, before any issuer fee or issuer markup on top.

For your own numbers, the calculator puts the merchant-side markup and your issuer's side against the ECB reference rate. The short version of the fee question is in the FAQ.

What about airline and hotel booking sites?

The largest published attempt to measure online conversion is an airline study. The European Consumer Centres Network studied 55 of the 57 EU-licensed airlines carrying over a million scheduled passengers in 2010, comparing booking prices against ECB, Visa and Mastercard rates.

Read its numbers as quoted prices rather than as charges anyone was billed. The method was window shopping, and the study records instances where it could not contrast the information because no actual booking of flights took place.

It set 1.61% as its threshold, the widest spread it observed between the ECB, Visa and Mastercard rates themselves, and treated a currency variation above that as hardly justifiable.
19 of the 55 airlines may have charged above those thresholds, and about half of that group in excess of 5% above market exchange rates.
The largest single figure, a 13.03% price increase, was recorded for simply selecting a different currency, not for DCC. The two airlines the study identified as applying DCC showed average price increases of 4.38% and 6.08%.
Two individual complaints were priced exactly: 8.21% above the applicable Mastercard rate that day, and 11.29% above the applicable Visa rate.

That study is from 2011 and predates both PSD2 and the EU transparency regulation, so read it as the historical baseline rather than as today's figure.

The most recent named test here is Which?'s work on Ryanair: in all ten flights it looked at, the switch caused passengers to pay more than sticking to euros. On one booking, a fare advertised at EUR 156.45 came to GBP 145.82, against GBP 137.10 at the Visa rate of 87p per euro. That is about 6.4% on a single ticket. The article was published in March 2019 and draws on earlier research from March 2018, and it covers one carrier.

The commercial logic is published by the people selling it. Fexco, a DCC provider, sells airline DCC as generating additional revenue with zero FX risk to the airline, plus an agreed share of commission.

Hotels split into two problems. Where you prepay on the site, it is the checkout question above. Where the booking ends in a card hold at the desk, the currency you accept at check-in can carry through to the final charge with no second prompt: Moneris, a Canadian acquirer, documents that flow in its March 2017 hospitality guide, where the pre-authorisation advice uses the currency selected by the cardholder during the pre-authorisation and the conversion rate in effect on the date the advice is performed. Mastercard's own merchant guide states that the rate shown at check-in is an approximation, with the final rate determined on the date the transaction is processed. Whether the terminal at your hotel behaves the way Moneris describes is not something we have verified.

What to do about it

Look at the payment step for a rate. A conversion offer has to show both amounts, the conversion rate that would apply and any other fee charged if you take it. If the payment step is quoting your own currency alongside the merchant's price, something is being converted on your card, and you can decline it.
Set the checkout to the merchant's own currency before paying. Under Visa's rules the merchant may not impose additional requirements on you to have the transaction processed in its local currency. That removes the merchant's side of the conversion; your own issuer's foreign charge is a separate thing, set by your cardholder agreement.
Check whether a currency was ticked for you. On a Visa transaction, pre-selecting is Visa's own example of a procedure a merchant must not use; on a Mastercard transaction it is allowed online only if the page discloses the pre-selection and gives you the means to decline.
Screenshot the payment page before you submit. It is what you show your bank if you want it to raise a dispute. If your bank does raise one, Visa's merchant dispute guidance puts the burden on the merchant to produce evidence that you actively chose DCC, plus a copy of the transaction receipt. Mastercard's route differs: under its Currency Errors condition the issuer charges back only the difference, within 90 calendar days of the central site business date for most non-ATM transactions.
Keep your expectations honest. The UK's Financial Ombudsman Service states that a bank or lender does not have to raise a chargeback and that chargebacks can fail; its guidance covers goods and services generally, not DCC specifically.

For the in-person version of the same decision, print the refusal card. If the charge has already landed and you want to know what happened, work through how to tell if you were charged DCC, then put the figures into the calculator.

Sources

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

Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026: s.5.8.9.2 (DCC merchant, ATM and branch requirements), s.5.8.22.1 (Multi-Currency Pricing), s.1.4.3.2 (international transaction fee disclosure), s.4.1.24.7 (agentic acceptance of DCC and MCP), s.5.9.2.3 / Table 5-34 (required receipt content), cover page and edition note. The MCP versus DCC distinction, pre-selection as Visa's named example of a prohibited procedure, the express-agreement duty, the no-extra-requirements duty, the receipt content list, the issuer fee disclosure, the agent rule and the document edition. usa.visa.com ↗
Visa Currency Conversion, DCC merchant integration guide, Visa Acceptance Solutions (Cybersource). That the DCC rate is a wholesale rate with a markup, that DCC may not be performed by default, the rate expiry timestamp, and rate reuse on capture and refund. developer.visaacceptance.com ↗
Mastercard Transaction Processing Rules, 9 June 2026, s.3.8 POI Currency Conversion (3.8.1 disclosure, 3.8.4 processing, 3.13.1 receipts). The no-default rule, the internet pre-selection carve-out, the pre-authorisation disclosure list, the mandatory e-commerce warning, the anti-steering wording, and the local-currency default when no choice is made. mastercard.com ↗
Dynamic Currency Conversion Performance Guide, Merchant Edition, Mastercard, 2025 edition. That automatic DCC is not permitted by Mastercard Standards, the prohibited-practices list, disclosure before the authorisation or preauthorisation request, and the hotel check-in rate being an approximation set on the processing date. Guidance about the Standards, not the Standards themselves. mastercard.com ↗
Dynamic Currency Conversion Program Guide for Hospitality Merchants (03/17), Moneris. One Canadian acquirer's documented flow: the pre-authorisation advice reuses the currency chosen at check-in, at the rate in effect on the date the advice is performed. moneris.com ↗
Ryanair continues to rip-off passengers with dynamic currency conversion, Which?, 1 March 2019. Where the currency switch sits in one airline's booking flow, and the ten-flight figures. Published March 2019, drawing on earlier research from March 2018. One carrier, not current practice. which.co.uk ↗
Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 on cross-border payments in the Union (codification), Articles 1, 4 and 5. The current text of the markup-disclosure duty, its ATM and point-of-sale wording, the repeal of Regulation (EC) No 924/2009, and the Union-currency scope limit. eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
Regulation (EU) 2019/518, recitals 8 and 11. Where online purchases are contemplated in the instrument that introduced the duty, and that it is recital text rather than operative text. eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
The Payment Services Regulations 2017, regulation 57 (Currency and currency conversion). The UK transposition of PSD2 Article 59(2), including the by-the-payee limb. Verified as wording; territorial reach is not established by it. legislation.gov.uk ↗
Article 59 PSD2, Currency and currency conversion (unofficial reproduction). Corroboration only, that the by-the-payee limb is in the directive itself and not only in the UK version. lewik.org ↗
Using a Credit Card abroad, American Express UK, published 24 April 2024, updated 16 July 2025. The published 2.99% currency conversion fee. americanexpress.com ↗
Important Notice and Cardmember Agreement, Foreign Currency Charges, American Express International (Hong Kong). The published 2% conversion commission. americanexpress.com ↗
Dynamic Currency Conversion: When paying abroad costs you more than it should, BEUC position paper BEUC-X-2017-118, 30 October 2017. The UK contrast of a DCC fee around 10% against a typical bank markup of 0% to 3%, which BEUC sources to the Financial Times, 19 October 2017. beuc.eu ↗
Utbredt valutafelle lurer nordmenn for en milliard, Forbrukerradet (Norwegian Consumer Council), 24 May 2017. The 1.75% standardised scheme markup against a 6% to 7% DCC markup, in the Norwegian market in 2017. forbrukerradet.no ↗
ECC-Net Study on Airlines' Currency and Payment Card Fees, The Cost of Paying, December 2011. The 55-of-57 sample, the window-shopping limitation, the 1.61% threshold, and every airline percentage on this page. consumereurope.dk ↗
Dynamic Currency Conversion for Airlines, Fexco. A DCC provider describing the revenue and commission share, in its own words. fexco.com ↗
Dispute Management Guidelines for Visa Merchants, June 2024, Condition 12.3 Incorrect Currency. What a merchant must produce to defend a currency dispute: evidence the cardholder actively chose DCC, plus the receipt. usa.visa.com ↗
Mastercard Chargeback Guide, Merchant Edition, 19 May 2026, Point-of-Interaction Error (reason code 4834), Currency Errors. That Mastercard's route charges back only the difference, within 90 calendar days of the central site business date for most non-ATM transactions. mastercard.com ↗
Problems with goods and services: section 75 and chargeback, Financial Ombudsman Service (UK). That a bank or lender does not have to raise a chargeback and that chargebacks can fail. Goods and services generally, not DCC. financial-ombudsman.org.uk ↗