Hilton Debit card FX rates

[M001]

I’ve just completed my first FX transaction with the Hilton debit card and the rate is around 0.5% below what I got using my MBNA horizon card on the same day and around 1% below the Wise rate.

Has anyone had any experience of this? I was under the impression from the review on here that the Hilton/Currensea rates are the best going. I did contact them and they said:

Whilst you may have gotten a slightly better rate using Wise, you also have the bonus of earning Hilton Honors Points when using your Hilton Honors Debit Card abroad. Wise does not offer this feature.

The Realtime Exchange Rate is our own Foreign Exchange rate which you can find more details about here. You can also view our live rates at any time via that same page.”

I feel like I’ve been missold a bit as I’m effectively paying a premium to buy Hilton points. It would be good to get others peoples (and HFP’s) thoughts before I demand a refund and go back to using MBNA horizon/wise. I’m abroad most of the year so put a decent amount through in foreign currencies

[John]

Do you have the regular or the premium card? The regular card charges 0.5%

Can you post the rates you received?

I haven’t applied for the hilton debit cards yet so have no personal experience, but looking online, right now:

For £1, the currensea live rate for the premium card is €1.2022, the mastercard rate is €1.1987 and the visa rate is €1.1983

For USD currensea rate is 1.3015, mastercard is 1.2955 and visa is 1.2951

For the past 3 years I have always received the exact mastercard and visa exchange rate that was showing on the respective websites at the time of the transaction.

https://www.mastercard.com/global/en/personal/get-support/convert-currency.html

https://www.visa.co.uk/support/consumer/travel-support/exchange-rate-calculator.html

[TGLoyalty]

Tbh it’s pretty normal you’ll win some and lose some depending on the card even with 0% fees because Mastercard, Visa and Amex all set their own daily rates and while they’re usually set based on the previous days rates but they each have their own way of coming to final daily rate.

If Currensea are using live rates you win or lose depending on how the £ fairs in the next days session.

No experience of Wise but again they’ll have their own way of deciding the rate to charge

You need to compare multiple days and multiple transactions to decide which on average is better.

But atleast with a 0% cards you’re paying additional fees over the FX rates.

You’re definitely buying the points as Horizon gives 0.5% CB but need to decide if that’s better or worse than the Hilton point(s) you’re getting (since you can buy them for c0.4p ish pretty much all the time with their 100% bonus offer it’s only worth it if you earn more than 1.25 Points / £)

I’m assuming you have the plus card but personally at 1.5 HH points or 0.8p/£ you need to be spending more than £50k to break even with the £150 fee (12.5k bonus changes the equation for year 1 as points are worth £50 so £33k spend before it’s worth it) and you could have got Gold for years by just getting the Platinum card for a month. Equation changes if it’s lots of Hilton stays of course.

[M001]

Thanks both and I have the plus card. It wasn’t a straightforward decision to get it as I have Hilton Gold from elsewhere but I spend c£50k a year overseas so 3 Hilton points to the £1 is roughly a 1% return. It’s especially useful for me to have Hilton points I can use as I’m avios rich and find I get good value from Hilton redemptions in Asia. However, if the exchange rate is worse than MBNA then I can’t justify the fee; I was expecting it to easily beat MBNA.

I’m going to try another transaction today and see how i get on; it may have been a timing issue.

Wise is always better but is for bank payments only so it’s not suitable for most things.

[M001]

The rate I received was 74.38 Philippine Pesos to £1 whilst a transaction with MBNA on the same day was exactly 75.00 and wise was offering 75.65

It seems like roughly a 0.5% premium over MBNA and 1% over Wise (which is pretty much the headline rate)

The date was October 28th.

[John]

According to https://www.currensea.com/pricing/exchange-rates they use the mastercard exchange rate for minor currencies

Doesn’t Wise have additional fees not included in the exchange rate?

Will be interested to know what rate you get today, mastercard rate is currently 75.28

[JDB]

@M001 – firstly, you can’t have been “missold” anything as you didn’t receive any advice in choosing to take out the Hilton debit card.

Currensea is totally transparent about the FX rates it charges and I think you may have misunderstood how credit cards in general apply FX rates. You have no idea at the time of the transaction what rate will be applied, whichever card you use. It depends precisely where you use it, the bank used by the merchant, the country in which you use it, the time of day and timezone etc. You will win some and lose some. You refer in your second post to a 0.5% premium over MBNA which is the rate applied by Currensea on the cheaper Hilton card. You get ‘live’ rates on big currency pairs, otherwise you get Mastercard rates, without premium on the more expensive card so there should be no difference with MBNA.

[John]

As I said in the second post, visa and mastercard tell you exactly what rate will apply in advance of any transaction.

A different rate would apply only if the merchant uses DCC, or if you don’t know when the merchant will actually take the payment (e.g. offline or delayed transactions)

[JDB]

@John – it simply doesn’t work like that. VI/MC publish rates but that’s the rate for the moment they process the FX transaction, not the moment you make the transaction with the merchant. At that moment, the retailer gets authorisation for the local currency sum you are paying and the merchant acquirer gets authorisation for the approximate sum in your card currency and that amount is blocked. It will then depend on a variety of factors and timing as to when the FX transaction is processed. Some transactions won’t hit your UK account for days if it’s after hours or at a weekend, public holidays etc.

This applies to virtually any standard credit card. Curve is one of very few that will give you a fixed £ sum immediately after the transaction, but there is no way of telling precisely what it will be until the transaction is executed.

[TGLoyalty]

“It depends precisely where you use it, the bank used by the merchant, the country in which you use it, the time of day and timezone etc.”

Not true for the big 3 card rates. They’re set for the day and everyone pays them for all transactions that day but the day itself will be defined by a single global timezone which is Eastern Time for Mastercard and the rate is published at about 3pm ET every day.

And it is the moment you authorise the payment unless there’s an issue it’s even noted on the fx calculator page. But if it can’t be done then it’ll be when it’s processed but most cases it point of sale/purchase.

https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en-gb/personal/get-support/convert-currency.html

@M001 I’m assuming you use chase for the first £1500 a month you spend? 1% cash is better than some Hilton points especially as they’re near enough linked to the cash price at about 0.35p per point. Out sized value at the real top end though.

[M001]

Thanks all. I’ve reached out to Hilton again as even the rate on the Mastercard site (using the link they sent me) for the exact amount and date as the actual transaction is 0.5% lower than I was charged on the plus card. I’m hoping it’s as simple as them applying the rate from the standard card. All very strange but it doesn’t add up.

[JDB]

TGLoyalty wrote:

“It depends precisely where you use it, the bank used by the merchant, the country in which you use it, the time of day and timezone etc.”

Not true for the big 3 card rates. They’re set for the day and everyone pays them for all transactions that day but the day itself will be defined by a single global timezone which is Eastern Time for Mastercard and the rate is published at about 3pm ET every day.

@TGLoyalty – these rates aren’t only published or applied once a day and on your analysis are only published in arrears. Any of these rates also refer, as above, to the time the FX transaction is processed which isn’t the same as the time you make the transaction with the merchant and it is affected by the credit card channel used by that merchant etc. etc.

Assuming one of the big three you reference is Amex, they use a constantly changing rate. I did two transactions last week in China to use an Amex offer, exactly same RMB sum, executed consecutively within 2-3 minutes and the £ sums were 64p different. There is absolutely no way of pre-determining the £ sum you will be charged on your statement; it’s a complete myth.

[TGLoyalty]

I agree there’s no real way of pre determining or even any real reason to bother doing it as they’re within less than % of each other.

But Mastercard tells you its methodology in the link and for me atleast I’ve never seen a difference in rate during an ET day and MasterCard clearly tell you the days rate is published at 3pm ET so it’s not changed during the day.

https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/customer-service/faq.what-are-exchange-rates-transaction-charges-abroad.html Amex are also clear on what they do and that it’s for the day not dynamic during it. But for them it’s on the day it’s processed. Any chance your 2-3 mins difference was over the swap of a U.K. time zone day or they were processed on different days?