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Comment by pixelpoet | Hacker News Reader

My Czech bank (Equabank) also made withdrawals free anywhere in the world a few days ago; I was worried that this would come with hideous rate increases, but apparently not.

Weird instance of banking actually getting better with time?!

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I think that's due to pressure from a number of fintech-companies such as revolut, monzo, transferwise, and what not. They focus on exactly just that, lower exchange rates and simpler money transfers.

A friend went to a talk from a large swiss bank and there was also this question, why they did not go faster forward. The answer was pretty short. Why kill a cashcow.

I believe actually there was EU regulation that forced this...

When Monzo made EU withdrawals completely free (again), they said

> After a change in EU regulation on cross-border payments we've decided to remove ATM fees and limits for countries in the European Economic Area (EEA). This means in all EU countries (and a few more) your cash withdrawals are now free! You can see the full list of countries here.

What I hear from people in the traditional banking sector, they actually don't mind the newer fintech companies such as Revolut, N26 and so on because they'll mainly attract the kind of customers that the traditional banks would rather not have. If you don't have a mortgage, loans, credit cards, stock or so on, then you're not really worth the hassle of having you as a customer. The fintech startups offer none of those things.

No surprises that shortsightedness pervades the traditional banking sector. These services appeal to people who like to travel, i.e. people who are relatively more well off. Then they hope to upsell other financial products to them.

Check what is the currency exchange fee - while you might not pay for withdrawal, they can still add a few % of the exchange fee (that’s at least the case for some of Polish cards).

More and more traditional banks are getting rid of these fees too.

Mastercard rates are very good (typically better than Transferwise's), and Visa has been catching up as well.

It is definitely the case for Czech banks. GP's Equa has about 2.5 % in fact. Worse, there's basically no banks that have under 2 %.

Schwab's currency exchange fee (via withdrawal at non-US ATMs in local currency) has basically been the spot rate in my experience, for a decade or more that I've been using it. And there's no other fees so it's basically free forex (for small amounts I presume, they're not going to let you do that for $1M I bet).

Same - I’ve found Schwabs rates to be better than virtually any other option

Given that the daily forex volume is around $5 trillion[1], I wouldn't be surprised if they'll give you $1 million at the same rate as $1000.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-volume-is-traded-per-day-in-t...

How do you find out what exchange rate they use and how it compares to the spot rate? I have cynically assumed that they make money on this (despite claiming “no foreign transaction fee!”) but never knew how to check one company versus another.

I google “USD to GBP” or whichever currency right after I get the money. My BoA/Chase credit cards also give me basically spot rate conversions. Although this article explains why it might not make sense to use that number:

https://www.thinmargin.com/blogs/why-comparing-against-excha...

With HSBC, the bank rate they use at their ATMs isn't as good as the interbank exchange rate I would get if I used some other bank's ATM.

A Fintech banking startup in Switzerland (Neon) recently did the same. They also removed the surcharge on the exchange rate and now give the official MasterCard exchange rate.

The interchange rates are governed by EU rules. They’re not up to the banks.

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