This feels like a potential arbitrage opportunity... I live in Sweden, but if I can use a US credit card I can get high rewards?
You will probably not see rates that are even competitive with a dodgy FX cash place at an airport, let alone with the numbers you've seen on financial networks for what FX transactions by banks cost, but you feel happy because there was "no fee".
No, the rate is set by the card network, eg https://usa.visa.com/support/consumer/travel-support/exchang...
>> Your bank may or may not use the rate indicated by this calculator to bill you
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(As a side note: the fine print follows up with this:
>> If your transaction is converted by the merchant or ATM operator, the exchange rate indicated by this calculator will not apply.
Don't ever let a merchant or ATM do foreign currency conversion for you. They charge astronomically high fees without exception. Pay in the foreign currency and let your card do the conversion.)
Where the banks do get their pound of flesh, though, is the foreign transaction surcharge, which is often around 3%. No-fee cards exist but you need to look for them. And a whole new set of charges applies to doing a foreign cash advance on a credit card.
You're crazy.
I have a Capital One account because they advertised "no foreign transaction fees". I checked on my foreign-currency payments and was always charged an amount that looked eerily similar to "1% more than you would have paid at the published exchange rate", so it's not clear to me why they say "no fee" and not "1% fee".
But the 1% fee that they actually have is very reasonable. An airport stall is in an entirely different league.
The card companies always add a margin to FX conversions, usually in the 0.5% range. This is fairly benign since the market rate can move between the transaction and the settlement, so sometimes you save money.
You see at the bottom of restaurant menus a note stating this.
It also applies to Danish business credit cards, as those aren't covered by the consumer credit card fee limits.