If you buy from an “Australian” website that bills in Australian Dollars (AUD) but uses a foreign payment processor, the local bank charges their usual FX percentage on the AUD amount. This results from a change to the T&Cs on Mastercard and VISA effective 20th March 2014, but may also apply to bank-issued American Express cards.

The problem is that there is no way that they or a cardholder can tell where a merchant will process a transaction. If the merchant does not disclose this on their website, there seems to be no way to tell.

Likewise some sites of multi national companies (no .au) address e.g. Dell/Apple do not charge

Hence through our members we can advise others here of past experiences with websites that through their payment policies will incur such a charge unless you use a card that does not charge fees (eg 28 degrees card)

Here are some sites that do:

¹ Sometimes when you buy from a reseller at ebay based overseas you can be directed to pay via Paypal rather than Paypal Australia.

Please add any other sites you find, so we can all help each other to avoid this charges should we so desire