Have any of you ever used any of these credit cards that have no foreign currency transaction fee's?  I know Amazon has one, and it's free, so no yearly fee that you need to pay.  But I've read of lot of the reviews saying that people keep getting their Amazon Card locked because they bought something online and it looked "suspicious" and then it's a huge headache to get it unlocked again.  There's a few other cards out there as well that do the same but there's an annual fee.  Anyone use these and can you give some feedback?  I'd like to get one but I'm not sure which to get.  We travel a lot and I purchase things from the US quite often so it would be worth it for us.

On 2/25/2016 at 10:29 AM, Logan007 said:

Have any of you ever used any of these credit cards that have no foreign currency transaction fee's?  I know Amazon has one, and it's free, so no yearly fee that you need to pay.  But I've read of lot of the reviews saying that people keep getting their Amazon Card locked because they bought something online and it looked "suspicious" and then it's a huge headache to get it unlocked again.  There's a few other cards out there as well that do the same but there's an annual fee.  Anyone use these and can you give some feedback?  I'd like to get one but I'm not sure which to get.  We travel a lot and I purchase things from the US quite often so it would be worth it for us.

You can get a US credit card through any of the Canadian banks now, I've had one for years.  Not sure about annual fees but it allows you to pay the monthly bill in USD and not deal with the poor exchange rates C.C. companies charge. 

As for traveling in countries other than the US,  everywhere I've traveled I've seen Interac machines and as long as they're physically attached to a bank they should be safe and reliable.  Having a couple of hundred worth in local cash on hand works for me, especially in 2nd and 3rd world countries where most vendors are not going to take credit cards anyway.  If you get robbed you lose a couple of hundred and not the damn card which can be difficult to quickly shut down or replace.

I'm not familiar with the Amazon one you are asking about, but like Bannatyne said, you can get a USD card from Canadian banks.  CIBC offers a US Visa card, $35 annual fee.  If you have a US funds account with them you can pay the card off without ever dealing with exchange issues.  Of course this requires you to have US money in that US account, not something most Canadians do.

The credit card I'm talking about is not just for US exchange. It doesn't charge any extra interest on any foreign purchases and there's no annual fee.