Twelve plain answers — what the mid-market rate is, why cards add fees, whether to accept DCC, and how this site sources, ranks and refreshes the rates of 600+ banks in 51 countries.
Leer esta guía en español →The mid-market rate is the midpoint between the buying and selling price of a currency on the global market — the rate you see on Google or in the news. No consumer gets it exactly: banks and card networks add a margin or a fee on top. It is still the honest yardstick, which is why MyRate FX measures every bank's rate against a mid-market reference, so you can see the real gap.
When you pay by card in a currency that is not your own, your bank converts the amount — and most banks add a foreign-transaction fee, a percentage on top of the exchange rate, for handling that conversion. The fee is set by your bank, not by the card network, and it varies widely: some banks charge nothing at all. Our card fee checker shows what your bank's card really charges, from the bank's own published pricing.
DCC is the offer, at a foreign card terminal or ATM, to be charged in your home currency instead of the local one. The conversion is then done by the terminal's provider at a margin it chooses, and under EU rules that offer must disclose its markup over the ECB reference rate. Choosing the local currency lets your own bank convert instead, at a fee you can check and compare beforehand. Our DCC guide walks through a real offer step by step.
Because they are different products with different costs. A cash board prices physical banknotes a branch has to stock; a transfer rate applies to money sent between accounts; card and ATM rates usually start from a card network or ECB reference rate plus the bank's disclosed margin. The gaps between them can be large, which is why MyRate FX tracks up to four separate rates per bank instead of one blended number.
From each bank itself. We read the exchange-rate boards banks publish on their own websites, every day. Where a bank prices card payments off a network rate, we combine the card network's or the ECB's reference rate with the fee or margin the bank discloses in its own public pricing documents. Each rate carries a note explaining how it was priced, and we never estimate a rate we cannot source.
Because that bank genuinely does not publish the number. Some price currency conversion individually per transaction, some only show rates to logged-in customers, and some disclose no fixed margin at all. Rather than guessing, we mark the value as not published and rank the bank below those that disclose. If the bank later publishes a figure, it appears together with the date we confirmed it.
No. Rankings are computed from the numbers alone — the exchange rate or the fee — and ties are broken alphabetically. Some banks have clearly marked sign-up links that can earn us a commission, but those links never influence a bank's position, and a bank that stops accepting new customers drops to the bottom of the table no matter how good its rate is.
Rates are collected daily, and every rate carries the date we last confirmed it against the bank's own source — not the date we first saw it. If a bank has not updated its board, or a value cannot be confirmed, the rate is shown with its real age instead of being silently presented as current.
51 countries and more than 600 banks, across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, with coverage still growing. For each country we also document which reference rate card pricing is measured against in that market. You can browse every covered bank, country by country, on the bank pages, or pick a country on the live comparison.
Pick your country and your bank on the home page to see its live rates next to every other bank in your country. For a specific question, use the focused tools: the card fee checker for what your card charges abroad, the transfer fee tool for sending money, and the travel budget planner for pricing a whole trip.
The same honest comparison, on your phone: every bank's rates for your country, a calculator that prices an actual amount, and support for ten languages. The Android app is live on Google Play in open testing — you will find the download link on the MyRate FX home page — and an iOS version is coming soon to the App Store.
No. MyRate FX shows the rates and fees that banks themselves publish so you can compare them side by side; it does not recommend financial products and is not affiliated with any listed bank. Rates are indicative, and the amount applied to a real transaction can differ — always confirm the final rate with your bank before a large exchange.
Every answer above is backed by the live data on this site. Compare the exchange rates of every bank in your country, look up your card's fee in the card fee checker, price a transfer with the transfer fee tool, plan a trip with the travel budget planner — or follow how the market moves in the weekly reports.