To minimize the spread costs in shopping in the North or Europe

Question

I just noted that my Norwegian Nordea's Visa Debit card's spread is 2,56% when I pay my shoppings with it in Estonia:

>>> a=7.33      // Google showed this course in its search by 1 EUR in NOK
>>> b=7.52      // currency course shown in netbank
>>> ave = (a+b)/2
>>> diff = b-a
>>> diff/ave
0.025589225589225523
>>> 

I have an intuition that to use the credit card minimize the spread cost. However, not sure yet, since no personal experience. I have also Mastercard, which costs me about 8 euros every month, when I do nothing with it. I will get it soon to my hands so I can test it.

How do you minimize the spread costs of shoppings in North or Europe?

I am particularly interested in the countries: Finland, Norway and Estonia, but I can travel if it will save me a percentage of money in every shopping.

Answer 1

The location that you are purchasing from is not really relevant. If you use either a Visa or MasterCard to make a payment in a foreign currency of any kind then your payment will automatically use Visa/MasterCard's FX platform. Whilst fees can vary between issuers, the fee is generally fixed at 2.5%.

There are occasionally credit card issuers who have special deals to remove these fees, but they tend to come and go and availability will depend on your country of residence.

The only real way to avoid the fee is to get access to a debit or credit card denominated in the currency you wish to use for your purchase. This is often achievable for USD or EUR, but much harder for smaller currencies. You would have to try contacting a bank in that country to see if they would open an account for you or attempting to purchase a pre-paid credit card online.