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Comment by pawelos | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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...

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.

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.

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 %.

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