[isomaniac]

Hello,

I am a new comer to this forum and I would like to say hi to everybody.

I come here primarily because I want to make more friends who are of different segments. I always think there are new stuff to be learnt from different people.

Anyway, I am working for a company providing credit card service and I would like to do a little research here:

Background:
Being a foreign living in Hong Kong, you must have encountered incidents when you made purchases using your VISA/MasterCard credit cards issued by foreign banks. But you would NEVER know what the purchase amount would appear in your credit card statement, until you actually received the credit card statement. That creates a big inconvenience because 1) you cannot submit expense report to your company unless you have received the card statement many days later and 2) the purchase amount may finally turn out to be much higher than you expected because the bank charges you "exchange rate" of "fees" due to your home currency is not the HK dollar.

My questions are:
1) There may be a small number of merchants who offer a "choice of currency" when you make purchase. You are offered a choice of whether be billed as your "home currency" or "Hong Kong dollar". You will see the exact purchase amount shown in the credit card POS screen and the credit card saleslip. This is also the same amount which will appear in your credit card statement. So, as a foreigner living in HK, have you ever encountered such merchants which offer you this choice? What are these merchants?

2)If you have never offered such choice before, do you think this "choice" is useful? Do you like this?

Thanks a lot

[KnowItAll]

I've generally used sites like oanda.com to calculate foreign exchange rates for credit cards.

If you work for a company that has many overseas travellers, they

1) Either give you corporate credit cards
2) Have established rates for overseas spending

Generally depends on how well the company takes care of its travelling employees.

Also, American Express and a couple of other international banks like Citibank offer US$ credit cards for people who wish to travel / purchase frequently using US$ terms.

By the way, anyone "living" in hong kong has a HK$ card and would care less about such an option being offered here.

[KnowItAll]

By the way, having checked out which bank you work for, I can assure you many smaller corporations will accept a print out of the online transaction report -- in lieu of an actual physical receipt. Its all a matter of having an educated financial controller.

[isomaniac]

Thanks a lot for your info.

Since you raised, I would love to know if there is any difficulty for foreigner to apply for a credit card from local banks? Is the lack of "local" history/info being an obstacle?

As many of you might have friends/families come to HK to visit you, they probably don't have HK issued credit cards. So what do you think these people may prefer when they make purchase in HK? Do they prefer to see a choice between "Actual amount in they home currency" or "Amount in HKD currency" while accepting the possible fluctuation of exchange rate/fees?

Thanks a lot!

[KnowItAll]

>> difficulty for foreigner to apply for a credit card from local banks

Most of the local banks do not have a problem if your payroll account is with them. Your bank in particular seems to be the worst of the lot when it comes to extending credit to expats (anyways, that was my experience 11 years ago) and lately has been extremely uncooperative in the business area with us too.

What might actually work, instead of providing all these silly gimicks, is if banks actually stopped using outrageous rates for overseas transactions. Earn your money the good old fashioned way on the interest and not on the exchange rates.

[isomaniac]

In fact, most local banks are stress that they put more effort on earning "non-interest profit" meaning to earn more on fees, rather than on interest rates

[nivantj]

Originally Posted by KnowItAll

>> What might actually work, instead of providing all these silly gimicks, is if banks actually stopped using outrageous rates for overseas transactions. Earn your money the good old fashioned way on the interest and not on the exchange rates.

Very True...
But unfortunately many such gimmicks work easily for them. One such example is local Credit Card Buss.. Thousands of youngsters live on Advance cash with multiple cards on their hand and moving one's hat on others without understanding hiddent costs...

[KnowItAll]

>> Thousands of youngsters live on Advance cash with multiple cards on their hand and moving one's hat on others without understanding hiddent costs...

This is becoming worse by the day. Many people are caught up by the whole "economy is improving" so lets spend today ... and there will be high paying jobs and chinese new years bonuses that will pay off the bills.

With the weakening dollar, I'd like to see how this is sustainable.

May be they'll get govt funded jobs with Disney .. who knows.

[kostas]

Yeap.. and as a result you see young kids just finishing studies and going directly into bankruptcy..

[fly]

Back to the question, I personally don't really see the value to this feature; barring wild currency swings or unscrupulous retailers, one can pretty much have a fair idea what the statement charges will reflect in the next statement. Depending how educated your financial controller is, some MNC's will allow you to claim the exchange rate diff. between the "official vs. c/c" rates anyways, so it's hard to lose out really unless you're really trying hard to ignore the available information at hand.

Personally I'd love to see more value-for-money features on my cc: no silly points for gifts from a catalogue that I never will use, but more cash rebate, airmiles, or other tangible rewards to welcome my business.