In the good old days, if you processed credit card transactions in US Dollars, and you as a Merchant resided outside the United States, the customer was billed the exact amount in US Dollars.
Now most US banks are charging a Foreign Transaction Fee of 1% oto 3% on US Dollar transactions, if they consider the merchant foreign. Yes they skim 1% o 3% off the top for doing absoulutly nothing.
Even worse, when the customer gets the credit card statement they don' see
Online Widget Sales $200.00
Bank of America Pilferage Fee $ 6.00
They see
Online Widget Sales $200.00
Online Widget Sales $ 6.00
The customer calls up and says, why did you charge us $6.00, or why did you charge us twice, and we have to explain to them, its the bank that is ripping them off.
This is got to be such a problem, that we are opening a merchant account in the United States, to be deposited to a US bank. We have been told that they determine foreign merchants, by the bank where they merchant deposits are being sent.
However, we have now heard that they may determine if you are a foreign merchant by your merchant country code, tied to your merchant account. We heard this from only one source, so hopefully they are wrong.
I'm sure a lot of you in the travel business is going thru this madness, and any light on how to setup operations so, our American customers, that buy items from a Canadian Company that
has our servers in the USA
drop ship from the USA
by American Workers in the USA
to American Customers
would stop being charge foreign tranaction fees on US Dollar purchases.
