Citi spokeswoman tells Doctorofcredit that the Costco Anywhere Visa personal and business credit cards will eliminate all foreign transaction fees after January 25, 2018. Currently, there is a 3% foreign transaction fee on these cards.
Citi and Costco are announcing a new benefit to the Costco Anywhere Visa® Card by Citi: the removal of foreign transaction fees on purchases made when cardmembers shop abroad or on an international retailer’s website. This new feature will be available on purchases made after Jan. 25, 2018.
This is certainly a welcome change, and it make the Costco cards another no-annual-fee card without foreign transactions fees either. It can be particularly useful for foreign purchases of gas, travel, and restaurants since the Costco cards earn higher rewards on those categories – 4% on gas and 3% on travel/restaurants. Travel purchases are especially notable since some online travel purchases made from your home might process internationally.
Thanks to OMAAT for tipping us off to the change
Why does the title say “Expired”?
Hey Doc,
Awesome headsup and thanks for it! This is huge for me, I’m a power costco user so I get a lot of value from this card. Whats great is up to 50K/yr spend you get essentially 4% reverse velocity on all costco purchases, top up with rotating 5% (10% 1st yr Discover) quarterly bonuses, and you can really knock it out of the park at Costco.
Question: the fine print says ‘after January 25th’. I have a $500+ invoice I need to pay to a Japanese supplier: given that fine print do you think I’m clear to run the transaction today (1/25)? Or am would I need to wait till tomorrow 1/26? Don’t wanna pay the $15+ in fees!
Costco is just a copycat. They copied Sam’s Club from earning structures to annual fees to redemptions, etc. and now no forex. Sam’s Club MasterCard / Synchrony (personal and business) eliminated forex fees last year. Costco’s employees (especially service desk and managers) are pushy and rude and obnoxious. Canceled my 1yr complimentary membership before its renewal date.
Yeah. I was gonna say the same thing -about their removal of the 3% FTF. it was definitely to compete with Sam’s Club Mastercard that had 0% FTF.
I went with Sam’s club because it was closer to my house that Costco.
Maybe it’s regional or just your preferences, who knows. In my experiences as far as service is concerned Costco blows SamsClub out of the water. With that said, I keep a membership to both since there’s things we need from both warehouses.
Does anyone think the card actually has a $60 fee because you have to be a Costco member to have this card? On top of that the rebate can only be spent at Costco, that is not really a true cash back.
I absolutely look at the fee as being $60. I imagine there are people that get a lot of value out of shopping at Costco, but for me I just like the shopping experience there.
Lucky you. The Costco here is very WalMart ish. Cant see it is an enjoyable experience. Always crowded and long line at check out the few times there we tried to use our cash cards received as gift.
Besides our 2-person household struggles to find any value shopping at Costco. We found much better prices shopping at regular retail stores on sale items at the sizes that work far better than us. We tried the whole sale club for one year a few years ago and found we actually could not even breakeven on the membership fee…
FLL:
Besides applying it towards in-store purchases, you can ask in-store for it to be redeemed as cash. I cash out every year.
FYI, you can always ask for the rebate in cash at the store.
It is a true cash back, literally. You take your redeemable certificate and they give you cash. You put in your pocket and walk out. I just walked out with nearly $700 just a couple of weeks ago.
Although I really liked the card when it first came out, I am getting more and more detached with it.
For Costco purchases, I am relying more on Discover 5% categories (we have 2 Discover in the family) and for travel purposes I am using CSR.
In addition, as the cashback is tied to Costco reward dollars, I don’t have incentive to use it for daily use purposes.
I just wish Citi would allow me to product change my card to something else but they denied it on the last call. Will try again this month to see if their policy has changed.
Now all they need to do is change the cash back from an annual rebate check to redemption being available all year and I might keep the card. The unfortunate thing, though, is that I’ve been told by Citi that I cannot PC from the Costco card per their policy.
Unless you’re a heavy hitter I don’t understand why this would be the reason you’d cancel the card. It’s not like the Costco card is good for MS anyways. Would like to hear your thoughts on this.
This is in addition to Costco beginning to be a difficult place to shop. More and more I’m feeling it’s becoming closer to Walmart of the early 2000s with far too much friction to shop at.
I also don’t MS so that doesn’t factor in at all.
Definitely isn’t a difficult place to shop.
Just wish my local Costco accepted Apple Pay for the added convenience.
At least their chip reader plays a pleasant jingle when it’s ready for you to take your card!
On an unrelated note, I’ll be using Costco cash cards purchased with discover CC for the 5% Q1, leaving my 4 Freedom cards free for the 5x mobile payments.
Weird. I find the complete opposite to be true. Maybe you have a bad location?
Costco is by far one of our main go-to places to buy what we need on a weekly basis. It’s up there with Amazon as “can’t live without.” In all fairness we’re a family of 4 so that may have something to do with it, but even when it was just the wife and I we always shopped there.
@anthonyjh21:
In your other comment post, you mentioned buying Costco cash card with Discover card. Can you share you were able to do that?
Just go to costco.com and buy a cash card. If its like the last two years of data points you’ll be good to go and it’ll trigger the 5% category for warehouse for the IT card.
Hi anthonyjh21,
Have you purchased Mastercard GCs at Sam’s Club before?
Now that USPS does not accept these for purchasing MOs, what other options would you recommend?
Very very good news!