Watch your bank's fees before charging your card abroad

PERSONAL FINANCE:TRAVELLERS RETURNING from foreign trips might be alarmed to see extra charges on their credit-card bills from their overseas spending.

These charges can be very confusing.

If you withdrew cash at an ATM on your overseas holiday, AIB, the country's largest bank, will charge you €1.90 or 1.5 per cent of the transaction's value, whichever is greater.

If you withdrew $300 from an ATM in California yesterday, for example, the sum would convert to about €210 - the exchange is calculated using the rate on the day of the purchase.

On this transaction AIB would charge you €3.15, or 1.5 per cent of €210. If you withdrew $150 (€105), however, then you would have to pay €1.90: 1.5 per cent of the transaction works out at less than €1.90, so the higher fee would apply.

You would also be charged a currency-conversion fee. This differs depending on whether you have withdrawn the cash using a Visa or MasterCard.

With Visa the charge is 1.75 per cent of the transaction value in Europe and 2.75 per cent in the rest of the world.

If you're using MasterCard, the currency fee is 1.91 per cent, regardless of where the transaction is carried out.

So, taking the $300 cash withdrawal, you will be charged a cash-advance fee of €3.15 and an additional €5.78 with Visa or €4.01 with MasterCard, bringing the total charge to €8.93 on a Visa card and €7.16 on a MasterCard.

Bank of Ireland operates a little differently. It charges a 1.5 per cent fee when you withdraw cash from any ATM using your credit card.

The bank also charges a "cross-border handling fee" of 1.75 per cent if you are withdrawing cash in any currency other than euro or buying goods in non-euro countries.

If your credit-card account is in credit, however, or has a zero balance after the transaction is completed, there is no charge for withdrawing cash.

In other words, if there's cash on your credit card, you can withdraw it without charge. Therefore you can save money by lodging cash to your credit-card account before you travel abroad.

Charges vary considerably with other banks and credit-card companies, so make sure you check what fees you will be charged before you travel rather than wait until that painful post-holiday bill.