Paying abroad
The rate you get on a card abroad is set by the card network, not by the shop — and the one decision that costs you money is the one the terminal asks you to make in three seconds at the till.
This page does not rank credit cards. Card terms change month to month, so a table of fees and bonuses is out of date faster than it can be checked, and every figure on this site carries the date it was checked for exactly that reason. This directory also earns commission on bookings, and a site that takes commission has no business telling you which credit product to hold. What is below is the mechanics, from primary sources, and what the money is called in the places covered here.
Who sets the exchange rate, and it is not the shop
When you pay in a currency that is not your card's, the card network converts it — not the merchant, and not you. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's definition is plain about the mechanism: the network calculates the amount in your home currency using “either a government-mandated or wholesale rate in effect on the date that the network processes the transaction”.
Two things follow. The rate you get is the one the network happened to publish on the processing date, which is not necessarily the day you bought anything. And because that rate is wholesale, it is better than anything a bureau de change or an airport desk will offer you.
Whatever your card adds on top of that is your card issuer's charge, set in your cardholder agreement. It is the one number worth looking up before a trip, and it is in your own paperwork rather than on a page like this one.
SourcesConsumer Financial Protection Bureau — credit card contract definitionschecked 2026-09-21
The question the card machine asks, and the answer
A terminal abroad will often offer to charge you in your own currency instead of the local one. Accepting means a third party does the conversion rather than your card network — and that party chooses its own rate and its own margin.
In the EU and the EEA there are rules about telling you. Article 3a of the cross-border payments regulation requires currency conversion charges to be expressed “as a percentage mark-up over the latest available euro foreign exchange reference rates issued by the European Central Bank”, and says that “that mark-up shall be disclosed to the payer prior to the initiation of the payment transaction”. At an ATM or a till, the same article requires the information to be displayed and requires the operator to tell you that paying in the payee's own currency is possible.
None of the destinations in this directory is in the EEA. Nobody in the Maldives, Thailand, Fiji or the Bahamas has to disclose that mark-up to you at all, which makes the habit worth having rather than the rule worth knowing: when the machine asks, choose the local currency.
SourcesRegulation (EU) 2019/518, Article 3a — currency conversion chargesConsumer Financial Protection Bureau — credit card contract definitionschecked 2026-09-21
Taking out cash is a different transaction
On a credit card, cash is not a purchase. The CFPB's definition of a cash advance covers obtaining cash from an ATM, obtaining cash “from any other source”, wire transfers, travellers' cheques, money orders — and, explicitly, foreign currency purchases.
That last one catches people out. Buying local currency with a credit card, at an airport desk or online before you fly, is a cash advance on most agreements rather than a purchase, and cash advances usually carry their own fee and start accruing interest immediately instead of at the end of a statement period.
A debit card does not have that problem, because there is nothing to advance. What it may have instead is a per-withdrawal charge from your own bank and another from the machine's owner, which is an argument for taking out more, less often.
SourcesConsumer Financial Protection Bureau — credit card contract definitionschecked 2026-09-21
What you pay with, by destination
Quoted from each destination's own fact sheet with the date it was checked, and read from the same source the destination pages use — so a correction lands on all of them at once. 5 of the 9 sheets say more than the name of the currency; the rest say only that, and this page does not guess at the difference.
- Bahamas
- Bahamian dollar (BSD), pegged to and interchangeable with the US dollar.Sourcechecked 2026-09-19
- French Polynesiaincl. Bora Bora, Tahiti
- CFP franc (XPF).Sourcechecked 2026-09-19
- Hawaii
- US dollar. Cards accepted everywhere; no currency exchange needed for US visitors.Sourcechecked 2026-09-19
- Maldives
- Maldivian rufiyaa (MVR). All major credit cards accepted; resorts price and bill in US dollars.Sourcechecked 2026-09-19
- Mauritius
- Mauritian rupee (MUR), 100 cents. Better rates on the island than before arrival; ATMs and exchange desks at the airport. Some upmarket restaurants add a 10-15% service charge.Sourcechecked 2026-09-19
- Seychelles
- Seychellois rupee (SCR).Sourcechecked 2026-09-19