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I purchased plane tickets at Kuwait Airways website, for a trip originated from US with a transition/overlay at Kuwait, by using a credit card issued in US. My credit card account shows not just the transaction, but also a second one with 1% of the ticket price, labeled as FRGN TRANS FEE and charged by Kuwait Airways if I am not mistaken.

DESCRIPTION: Frgn Trans Fee-Kuwait Ai2292113807162 Ci

TYPE: FRGN TRANS FEE


Merchant details
CATEGORY: KUWAIT AIRWAYS
METHOD: Manually Entered

I don't remember seeing foreign transaction fee, when comparing flights on flight aggregators or search engines such as Expedia, and when placing the order directly at the airline website.

Whenever booking a flight with an airline and credit card which do not belong to the same country, is a foreign transaction fee inevitable? Is it almost always 1% of the ticket price?

Are there flight aggregators or search engines which include foreign transaction fee into price comparison? Or warn customers about it?

Thanks.

Tim
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2 Answers2

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Are there flight aggregators or search engines which include foreign transaction fee into price comparison?

I'm virtually sure there's no such flight aggregators or search engines, as foreign transaction fee comes from your bank and the sellers/agents have no clues about it. Also watch out for the suboptimal currency exchange rates (suboptimal = less favorable than the interbank rate).

FYI:

Franck Dernoncourt
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2

Whenever booking a flight with an airline and credit card which do not belong to the same country, is a foreign transaction fee inevitable? Is it almost always 1% of the ticket price?

Yes, it's inevitable, with the exception of some cards that explicitly do not charge forex fees. And it is usually more than 1%.

When you buy goods in another country and the goods are in a different currency, there are two possibilities:

  • the merchant charges you in your local currency, and in that case the merchant will either include the currency exchange costs directly in the price, or will charge a fee for it;

  • the merchant charges you in their local currency, and in that case the credit card company charges a foreign exchange fee (it looks like this is what happened in your case).

In many cases the choice is presented at the time of purchase, and often times it is presented without a clear statement of what the fees are, forcing one to guess which one is better. My impression is that it is usually better to take the credit card's fee rather than the merchant's, but that could depend on the card.

Regarding the fee, 1% is on the very low end of the spectrum. In my experience it is more typical to see 2/2.5%.

Martin Argerami
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