All questions

Why do hotels, rental desks and airport ATMs push this?

Last verified 22 August 2026 · by the NoDCC editorial desk

Who actually receives the markup?

Visa Acceptance Solutions, the payment-gateway documentation Visa publishes for merchants, says the rate used for DCC is "a wholesale exchange rate including a DCC markup". The markup is not a separate line added at the end of the transaction. It sits inside the exchange rate on the screen.

Four parties touch it:

• The DCC provider supplies the rate. In Fexco's words to airlines, the merchant carries no FX risk at all.
• The acquirer, the bank on the merchant's or ATM operator's side, has to register with the card network before it can process a single DCC transaction.
• The merchant or ATM deployer puts the offer in front of you and takes an agreed share of the commission.
• You pay the gap between the rate you accepted and the rate underneath it.

The clearest statement of the deal comes from a provider selling it. Fexco's page for airlines promises that dynamic currency conversion "generates additional revenue with zero FX risk to your airline", and tells the carrier to "count on your agreed share of commission". Stripe describes the same shape in general terms: the banks or financial service providers that offer DCC set the exchange rates and fees, and businesses earn additional revenue through commissions or fees. Neither source says how the commission is calculated, so nobody outside the contract can say what fraction of the markup reaches the counter.

Hotels and rental desks are written into this by name. Mastercard's 2025 DCC performance guide sets out separate handling for hotel check-in, where the rate shown at check-in is "an approximation" and the real rate is fixed on the date the transaction is processed, and for car rental, where "the transaction must use the exchange rate on the day that the car is returned". The Canadian acquirer Moneris publishes a whole DCC program guide for hospitality merchants, with the rental-agreement wording and the express-checkout form text. What no source in our register measures is how hard any hotel or rental desk pushes the offer, or what share it keeps.

The total is measurable, and it was measured recently. In April 2026 the Czech consumer-finance title Měšec.cz withdrew 1,000 CZK from ten Czech ATM networks with a German euro card and compared each DCC rate against the ECB reference rate for the transaction date. The markups ran from 6.51% at Air Bank to 19.00% at ATM Point. Euronet, one of the tested operators, later republished the same table on its own corporate site.

For scale, the Norwegian Consumer Council said in 2017 that a normal DCC markup was 6% to 7%, against the 1.75% it cited as the payment cards' own standardised markup. BEUC, reporting what is evidently the same Norwegian dataset, put the average at 7.6% and the largest markup at 12.4%; the two publishers do not reconcile, so take each with its own name attached. Your own card's number is the one that decides your alternative: Visa's rules let an issuer adjust the Visa rate "by the application of an Optional Issuer Fee as determined by the Issuer or via any Issuer self-determined markup outside of VisaNet", so check your foreign-transaction fee before treating 1.75% as your baseline.

Visa's rules require a DCC receipt to show the conversion commission, fee, markup or margin over a wholesale rate, so the number is meant to survive the moment at the counter. DCC is only one of the charges in a foreign withdrawal; the ATM fee guide takes the others separately.

Why does the clerk press the button before I answer?

Both rulebooks say they must not. Visa's published rulebook, at section 5.8.9.2, requires a merchant, ATM acquirer or branch offering DCC to inform the cardholder that DCC is optional, forbids procedures such as "pre-selecting the DCC option", and requires it to "ensure that the Cardholder expressly agrees to DCC". In a card-present transaction that agreement must be given by the cardholder "directly interfacing with a customer-facing screen or handheld Acceptance Device". A clerk tapping a currency on a terminal you never touched does not meet that.

Mastercard is blunter. Its 2025 DCC performance guide states that "automatic DCC is not permitted by Mastercard Standards" and that DCC "must not be applied without the cardholder's consent or selected in the cardholder's absence". The binding text is the Transaction Processing Rules, and they say "no specific currency conversion method may be implemented as the default option", with one carve-out: online, a currency conversion option may be pre-selected, but only if the cardholder is informed of the pre-selection and given the means to decline. If the cardholder does not choose to have the transaction completed in their billing currency, it "must be completed and processed in the local currency". Silence is supposed to land on local currency, not on theirs.

The prohibited-practice list in that guide reads like a description of what actually happens at counters. Mastercard names and bans: asking the cardholder to select "yes" or "no", "accept" or "decline"; "traffic lighting" colour patterns such as red and green buttons; highlighting or preselecting the DCC option; presenting DCC as the more favourable option; and a second screen offering DCC again after the cardholder already chose local currency.

Penalties exist, and they land upstream of the person holding the terminal. Visa may audit acquirers and their merchants for DCC compliance and can apply a non-refundable non-compliance assessment of up to USD 10,000, or USD 50,000 depending on the nature of the violation. Visa's own rule records one territorial exception: it does not apply in the LAC Region, Chile.

Your own remedy runs through your issuer, and the two networks route it differently. Visa's Dispute Condition 12.3 covers a transaction where DCC occurred and the cardholder did not expressly agree, or was refused the choice of paying in the merchant's local currency, and the dispute applies for the entire transaction amount. Mastercard's currency-error chargeback, message reason code 4834 on the dual message system or 34 on the single message system, has the issuer charge back only the difference, and it must be raised within 90 calendar days of the transaction's Central Site Business Date, or 120 days for intra-European and inter-European ATM and Maestro transactions.

One thing runs your way on Mastercard: on a dispute about whether you agreed to the conversion, the acquirer cannot second-present at all, and terminal logs are expressly no defence. Beyond that, neither route is automatic. The UK Financial Ombudsman Service states that "a bank or lender doesn't have to raise a chargeback" and that chargebacks can fail. The refusal playbook has the full ladder, starting with voiding the sale at the counter.

Why is it worse at airports and tourist streets?

What has been measured is the operator. Ten Czech ATM networks, one city, one card, the same 1,000 CZK withdrawal, each DCC rate compared against the ECB reference rate for the transaction date of 1 April 2026:

One machine per operator, one visit, one city, tested by consumer media rather than by a regulator. The test title is "fee, bad rate, or both", so separate withdrawal fees sit outside this table.

That is a spread of 12.49 percentage points. The worst machine's markup is 2.9 times the best one's, which on a 1,000 CZK withdrawal works out at about 11.7% more paid, in the same city on the same card.

Country matters too. Stiftung Warentest's 2019 test sent 30 testers to 23 non-euro countries, made 330 ATM withdrawals and 132 card payments, and met the DCC offer in 15 of the 23 countries; accepting it would usually have cost more than 5%, and up to 13.7%. A 2016 German test, reported by BEUC in 2017, found ATMs offering DCC in 11 of 13 non-euro countries, an increase in the price paid of between 2.6% and 12%, the highest costs in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, and 2% to 5% on in-store card payments.

Online is its own venue. The EU-funded European Consumer Centres Network checked 55 airlines in 2011 and found that about a third might charge above the 1.61% threshold it set for a justifiable currency variation, that around half of those might charge more than 5% above market exchange rates, and that in one case simply selecting a different currency raised the price by 13.03%; two airlines applying DCC showed average price increases of 4.38% and 6.08%. That study is from 2011 and predates the current transparency rules, so read it as the historical baseline for booking flows rather than as today's numbers.

Where airports genuinely come into it is ownership. According to a 2018 trade-press report of what Euronet told investors, Visa had confined DCC on its cards to the point of sale and to intraregional ATM transactions in Europe, and was to lift that restriction for all international ATM transactions worldwide from 13 April 2019; the same report says Euronet projected the change could add 60 to 65 cents to its 2019 adjusted earnings per share. Visa's published rulebook does not restate that history, so we cannot confirm it from Visa directly. For an operator whose revenue is the machine itself, the conversion prompt is not a side feature. Per-country exposure and the local refusal phrase are on the country pages.

Is this a licensed activity or a loophole?

Registered and audited, by Visa and Mastercard rather than by a public regulator. Mastercard's rulebook states that "prior to acquiring Transactions on which POI currency conversion has been performed, an Acquirer must register its intent to do so with the Corporation", and confirms that "POI currency conversion is also referred to as dynamic currency conversion, or DCC". Visa requires an acquirer to comply with the DCC registration and certification requirements before processing a DCC transaction, and may audit acquirers and their merchants to check compliance. That is a private scheme process, not a public licence: one law firm's reading of the coming EU rules says independent ATM deployers are only now being brought clearly into scope for fee transparency and registration, without needing a full payment licence.

The rules also name cards where DCC must not be offered at all. Visa bars it on cards enabled with the Visa Multi-Currency Solution and on travel prepaid cards including Visa TravelMoney. Mastercard bars acquirers from offering it on prepaid travel cards and multi-currency debit cards.

The 2019 change is worth knowing when you read a machine, with its provenance attached. On the trade-press account above, the prompt that greets a Canadian or Japanese card in a European arrivals hall is best explained by a rule that was opened, not by anyone finding a gap.

Three honest limits on all of this. The operative detail of what a Visa DCC screen must display is delegated to a separate DCC Guide, which Visa does not publish, so nobody outside the industry can check a screen against the layout it is supposed to have. Mastercard's DCC guides are guidance about the Standards rather than the Standards themselves: the 2025 merchant edition carries no printed effective date, and the earlier compliance guide states in terms that "this document does not contain Standards". And Mastercard's own download page warns that the posted documents "will not always be absolutely current in all regards", which is why every rule quoted here carries a checked date of 22 August 2026.

The one regulator action we could verify is about screens, not rates. The Hungarian Competition Authority opened case VJ/12/2025 on 7 March 2025 into an ATM operator's home-screen design, suspecting that displaying some functions and hiding others may "limit consumers' choice and force them to make transactional choices they would not otherwise have made, thus incurring additional costs". That case concerns which functions the home screen offers and the cost of a balance inquiry, not conversion rates, and as of 22 August 2026 the authority's press-release index showed no published outcome. Opening a case is not a finding.

The law is moving, within limits worth knowing. The markup-disclosure duty was introduced by Regulation (EU) 2019/518, which is itself no longer in force: EUR-Lex records it as repealed on 18 August 2021 by Regulation (EU) 2021/1230, the codification that now carries the same substance in Article 4. Article 4 applies to payments denominated in a Union currency, with the duty to display the mark-up falling on whoever offers the conversion at an ATM or at the point of sale, so a euro cardholder offered euros in Bangkok, Istanbul or New York is outside it.

Two further limits decide whether it reaches you at all. The duty runs to consumers, and the text says it does "not apply in whole or in part where the payment service user is not a consumer", which matters at a hotel or a rental desk where the card is often a company card. And whether it reaches a cardholder whose own bank sits outside the Union turns on the territorial rules in Directive (EU) 2015/2366, which we have not read: a US, Canadian or Japanese cardholder at a European ATM should not assume Article 4 covers them.

What comes next is announced, not yet confirmed as law. On 27 November 2025 the European Parliament announced a deal on new payment services rules covering pre-transaction information on "currency conversion charges or any fixed fees for cash withdrawal at automatic telling machines", and said at that point that the deal still needed formal adoption by Parliament and Council. One law firm's analysis of the provisional agreement expected Official Journal publication towards the end of Q2 2026, and expects the new regime to present conversion charges as a percentage mark-up over the ECB reference rate. We have not re-checked whether adoption has happened since, so confirm the current position before relying on it.

What do the operators say for themselves?

They say the choice is yours and the price is on the screen, and their own words are better than a summary of them.

Euronet's DCC page states that "our fee rates are monitored regularly, and we visibly show the margin per transaction as stipulated by the European Central Bank (ECB)", that it is "clear on the total fee cost before the transaction is completed", and that "deciding on whether to accept or decline the transaction is a voluntary decision and lies solely with the card holder". The page gives no markup percentage and does not say who sets the rate. Two months after the Czech test was published, Euronet reproduced the same table on its own corporate site, its own 15.00% included, describing the percentages as a comparison against the ECB daily exchange rate. In a separate statement dated 5 March 2024 about a Czech dispute over its ATM screens, Euronet said it charges clients no fee for balance inquiries and that any such fees are levied by the customer's bank; that statement is about balance inquiries, not currency conversion.

On the provider side, Fexco sells DCC to airlines as revenue with "zero FX risk" and an "agreed share of commission". Stripe tells businesses that the banks or financial service providers offering DCC set the exchange rates and fees. None of that is hidden. It is published sales material, which is exactly why quoting it is fair.

Visa's consumer page goes further than most travellers expect: "merchants and ATMs should give you a choice to accept or decline currency conversion and must not choose on your behalf", providers "should not use language or procedures such as different font size or color to influence your decision", and declining "will not impact your ability to make purchases or withdraw cash internationally". Visa's advice to refuse is conditional, and the condition matters: where those required details are missing or you feel pressured to choose one currency over the other, "Visa recommends that you decline the currency conversion offer and report the incident to your card issuer".

Note the verb, too. The consumer page says merchants "should" give you a choice; the rulebook says the merchant must ensure the cardholder expressly agrees.

On the one point that decides your money, the operators, the providers and both rulebooks agree with each other and with us: the currency is the cardholder's choice.

What to do about it

Refusing adds no charge of its own. Your bank's usual foreign-transaction fee applies either way, and in Visa's words, declining "will not impact your ability to make purchases or withdraw cash internationally".

1. Say the currency before the card comes out. "In [local currency], please." The refusal card carries that sentence in 40 languages, printable.
2. Touch the terminal yourself. Visa's rules require your express agreement given on a customer-facing screen or handheld device in card-present transactions, so asking to press the button yourself is asking for what the rule already says.
3. If you were never asked, do not choose. Under Mastercard's Transaction Processing Rules, a transaction where the cardholder did not choose their billing currency must be completed and processed in the local currency.
4. Expect the operator to matter more than you expect. In one Prague test in April 2026 the markup on the same 1,000 CZK withdrawal ran from 6.51% at one network to 19.00% at another. That is one city on one day, and no source we have measured the same operator in a second country. Check your destination on the country pages before you land.
5. Keep the receipt, and know what it proves. A Visa DCC receipt must show the conversion commission, fee, markup or margin, and an easily visible statement that you were offered a choice of currencies. That is a Visa rule. Mastercard's receipt rules do not require the markup to be printed, so its absence on a Mastercard receipt proves nothing, and Mastercard's no-consent dispute does not need the receipt anyway: a cardholder letter, email, message or Form 1240 is what that condition asks for.
6. Put a number on it. The calculator compares the rate you were offered against the ECB reference rate and returns the markup as a percentage. That is the number you put in front of your issuer, though the amount at stake differs by network: Visa disputes the entire transaction amount, Mastercard only the difference.

If it already happened, the refusal playbook has the dispute ladder and the FAQ has the short answers.

Sources

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

1. Fexco, Dynamic Currency Conversion for Airlines (provider sales page). The provider's own words on additional revenue, zero FX risk to the merchant, and the agreed share of commission. fexco.com ↗
2. Stripe, What is dynamic currency conversion?. Banks or financial service providers offering DCC set the rates and fees; businesses earn commission. Secondary source, attributed on the page. stripe.com ↗
3. Visa Acceptance Solutions (Cybersource), Dynamic Currency Conversion merchant integration guide. Gateway documentation, not network rules: the DCC rate is a wholesale rate with a DCC markup inside it, and the customer must be given an active choice. developer.visaacceptance.com ↗
4. BEUC, The Great Currency Conversion Scam, 21 November 2017. Names the venues: ATMs, airports, shops and online. beuc.eu ↗
5. Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.1.4.3.2 International Transaction and Currency Conversion Fee Disclosure. The Visa rate may be adjusted by an Optional Issuer Fee or an issuer's own markup outside VisaNet, so your own card's fee is not a constant. usa.visa.com ↗
6. Visa, Decoding Dynamic Currency Conversion (consumer page), as published 22 August 2026. Choice must not be made on your behalf; declining does not affect your ability to pay or withdraw; Visa's conditional advice to decline and report. visa.com ↗
7. Mastercard Rules, 2 June 2026, Rule 5.9 Transaction Currency Information. Acquirers must register their intent before acquiring DCC transactions; POI currency conversion is Mastercard's term for DCC. mastercard.com ↗
8. Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.5.8.9.1 DCC Acquirer Requirements. DCC registration and certification before processing; cards on which DCC must not be offered. usa.visa.com ↗
9. Mastercard, Dynamic Currency Conversion Performance Guide (Merchant Version), 2025 edition, s.5.3.1 Hotels and s.5.3.2.1 Car Rental. Hotel and car-rental DCC handling. Guidance about the Standards, not the Standards themselves. mastercard.com ↗
10. Moneris, Dynamic Currency Conversion Program Guide for Hospitality Merchants (03/17). An acquirer's operational DCC guide written for hotels and car rental desks, with the rental-agreement and check-out disclosure wording. moneris.com ↗
11. Měšec.cz, Turista u českého bankomatu: Poplatek, špatný kurz, nebo obojí (TEST), 4 May 2026. April 2026 field test, transaction date 1 April 2026, ten Czech ATM networks, markups of 6.51% to 19.00% over the ECB reference rate. One visit per operator. mesec.cz ↗
12. Euronet Worldwide, Bringing clarity to the conversation about ATM currency conversion charges in Czechia, 29 June 2026. The operator reproducing the same test table on its own site. Corroboration, not an independent measurement. euronetatms.com ↗
13. Forbrukerrådet (Norwegian Consumer Council), Utbredt valutafelle lurer nordmenn for én milliard, 24 May 2017. DCC markup of 6% to 7% against the cards' standardised 1.75%, from a 1,500-person study. forbrukerradet.no ↗
14. BEUC, Dynamic Currency Conversion: When paying abroad costs you more than it should (BEUC-X-2017-118), 30 October 2017. The 2016 German test (11 of 13 countries, 2.6% to 12%, 2% to 5% in store) and the Norwegian dataset at 7.6% average, 12.4% maximum. beuc.eu ↗
15. Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.5.9.2.3 / Table 5-34, DCC receipt content. The receipt must show the conversion commission, fee, markup or margin, and the choice-of-currency statement. usa.visa.com ↗
16. Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.5.8.9.2 DCC Merchant, ATM, and Branch Requirements. DCC is optional, no pre-selection, express agreement, given on a customer-facing screen in card-present transactions. usa.visa.com ↗
17. Mastercard, Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) Performance Guide, Merchant Edition, 2025 edition (no printed effective date). Automatic DCC not permitted; no consent in the cardholder's absence; the prohibited steering list; PIN last; prepaid travel and multi-currency debit carve-out. mastercard.com ↗
18. Mastercard, Transaction Processing Rules, 9 June 2026, s.3.8 POI Currency Conversion. No default conversion method, with an internet pre-selection carve-out requiring disclosure and a means to decline; non-choice processed in local currency. mastercard.com ↗
19. Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.12.3.3.1 DCC Non-Compliance Assessments. Visa may audit acquirers and merchants; assessments up to USD 10,000 or USD 50,000; does not apply in the LAC Region (Chile). usa.visa.com ↗
20. Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026, s.11.9.2 Dispute Condition 12.3: Incorrect Currency. Dispute right where DCC occurred without express agreement or local currency was refused; entire transaction amount. usa.visa.com ↗
21. Mastercard Chargeback Guide, Merchant Edition, 19 May 2026, Point-of-Interaction Error (reason codes 4834/34), Currency Errors. Difference only; 90-day and 120-day limits; evidence list; no second presentment on a consent dispute. mastercard.com ↗
22. Mastercard Chargeback Guide, Merchant Edition, 19 May 2026, Chapter 7, ATM Dynamic Currency Conversion and Currency Errors (compliance case). The chargeback covers ATM cases only for a Europe-issued card at a Europe-located ATM; everything else is a pre-compliance then compliance case within 120 days. mastercard.com ↗
23. Financial Ombudsman Service, Problems with goods and services: section 75 and chargeback. A bank does not have to raise a chargeback, and chargebacks can fail. financial-ombudsman.org.uk ↗
24. Stiftung Warentest, Geldabheben im Ausland: Wie Sie Kostenfallen vermeiden, Finanztest 6/2019, 13 May 2019. 30 testers, 23 non-euro countries, 330 withdrawals and 132 card payments; DCC met in 15 countries, usually over 5%, peak 13.7%. test.de ↗
25. ECC-Net, Study on Airlines' Currency & Payment Card Fees, The Cost of Paying, December 2011. 55 airlines, the 1.61% threshold, 13.03% maximum, DCC averages of 4.38% and 6.08%. Historical baseline only. consumereurope.dk ↗
26. Digital Transactions, Eye on ATMs: Visa Will Lift Dynamic Currency Conversion Restriction at ATMs, Euronet Says, 1 October 2018. The 13 April 2019 rule change and the reported 60 to 65 cents EPS projection. Trade press reporting what Euronet said; Euronet's own release could not be opened. digitaltransactions.net ↗
27. Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, 18 April 2026 (full public rulebook). Establishes that Visa's DCC screen detail sits in the non-public DCC Guide referenced by rule 5.8.9.1, and that the rulebook does not restate the 2019 ATM history. usa.visa.com ↗
28. Mastercard, Dynamic Currency Conversion Compliance Guide (undated; filename indicates February 2017). Carries the disclaimer that the guide does not contain Standards. No date printed in the body text. mastercard.com ↗
29. Mastercard, rules and compliance programs (official rules download page). Mastercard's own warning that the posted documents may not be absolutely current. mastercard.com ↗
30. Gazdasági Versenyhivatal (Hungarian Competition Authority), ATM network operator under investigation by the GVH, 7 March 2025. Case VJ/12/2025, opened on ATM home-screen design and balance-inquiry cost. An investigation, not a finding. gvh.hu ↗
31. Gazdasági Versenyhivatal, press releases index, checked 22 August 2026. Negative check: no published outcome in the case as of that date. gvh.hu ↗
32. Regulation (EU) 2019/518 on certain charges on cross-border payments and currency conversion charges. The originating instrument that introduced the markup-disclosure duty, and the source of the non-consumer carve-out wording. eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
33. EUR-Lex metadata record for Regulation (EU) 2019/518 (CELEX 32019R0518). No longer in force, end of validity 18 August 2021, repealed by Regulation (EU) 2021/1230. eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
34. Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 on cross-border payments in the Union (codification), Articles 1 and 4. The currently applicable text: the markup-disclosure duty and its scope, Union currencies, displayed at an ATM or point of sale. eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
35. European Parliament, Payment services deal: More protection from online fraud and hidden fees, 27 November 2025. The agreed package covering conversion charges and fixed ATM fees, and the statement, as at that date, that it still needed formal adoption. europarl.europa.eu ↗
36. Norton Rose Fulbright, PSD3 and PSR: From provisional agreement to 2026 readiness. One law firm's analysis: percentage mark-up over the ECB rate, independent ATM deployers in scope without a full payment licence, OJ publication expected end of Q2 2026. nortonrosefulbright.com ↗
37. Euronet Worldwide, Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC), corporate page. The operator's right of reply: margin shown per transaction, total cost clear before completion, voluntary decision. euronetatms.com ↗
38. Euronet Worldwide, Press Release: Euronet's statement on false claims in the Czech Republic, 5 March 2024. Euronet on balance-inquiry fees. Not a statement about DCC. euronetatms.com ↗
39. Mastercard Transaction Processing Rules, s.3.13.1 / 3.13.2 Transaction Receipt Requirements. Mastercard receipts must show both amounts, both currency codes and the rate used, but do not require the markup to be printed, unlike Visa. mastercard.com ↗