Re: cash conversion, depends on the bank in Europe. You can also exchange your currency at exchange windows (such as Forex) and in many post offices. In Denmark, the fee at my bank and at Forex—both in 2007 for me—were 30 DKK for the service, then money exchanged at their posted rate. I don’t know for a fact, but I think banks tend to use the “bank interloan” rate, and exchange windows tend to tilt their exchange rate in their favor a bit more, thus costing you a bit more than a bank or post office would.

How easily could you just set up a new acct. with a credit union before you go? They tend to have some of the lowest fees for foreign currency withdrawals. By withdrawing from a bank ATM, at least you know you’re getting the bank interloan (ie, the best for you the consumer) exchange rate that day, then the only other items to negotiate are the fees you mentioned—foreign atm, curr. conversion and Visa charge—which are set by your bank or credit union. I pay 1% total fees, with 3 free foreign ATM transactions per month with my US credit union Mastermoney card—just as an example—but I know there are better offers out there.

I second Don’s suggestion to try to get a new bank account that won’t charge anything extra to use ATMs abroad.

Based on my experience, ATM in Europe do not charge you anything extra on top on what you actually take.

The amount you take from an ATM gets converted from whatever local currency to US currency according to current interbank exchange rate, which is almost always better then cash exchange rate by a few percentage points. (Don: bank interloan rate is a credit rate, that is something quite different.) Conversion is not done by a bank but rather by a network (like Visa or MasterCard) and they charge your bank conversion fee equal to 1% of the converted amount. Most (if not all) banks will charge you that fee. What they charge over that is their profit.

In your example, when you take an equivalent of $200, Visa makes a profit of $2 for doing conversion, and Wachovia makes a profit of $4 (or $6, depending on how I read your math) for doing nothing.

Finally, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m pitching this particular bank. Still I’ve been using “American Bank, NA” (www.pcbanker.com) since 2000. They don’t charge anything (on top on Visa fee) for using ATMs abroad, and I never had any service issues with them. You may want to check them out.

Thanks Seva. I’ve read that Bank of America absorb the cost for foreign ATM withdrawals, thus saving an additional 1% that MC or Visa charge. However, I’ve also read that BOA aren’t much good for anything else. It might be more hassle than it’s worth to set up a BOA acct unless planning to withdraw significant amounts of cash.

Don, thanks for your comment about BOA absorbing forex charge, I did not know that. However the bank in my post above is not BOA. I know it’s easy to confuse the two, however the bank I’ve mentioned is a small company in PA that happens to have a relatively large web division.

As a side note I’m not a huge fan of BOA. When I taught at a (well-known) university in Los Angeles, they had “preferred relationship” with BOA. In three years while I was there, there were several instances of BOA not being able to process payroll deposits in time. When MBNA got bought up by BOA, they have immediately raised CC foreign transaction fee from 0% to 3%, that’s how they’ve lost me as a customer. []

Right, it’s not BOA. Thanks for clarifying that for everyone else reading. I mentioned it only as another option in the hunt for lowest fees.