Which issuer offers better foreign exchange rate – American Express or Visa?

During our visit to India in Dec. 2019, I primarily used “No foreign transaction fees” credit cards like Chase Sapphire Reserve (Visa) and American Express Platinum/ Gold cards.

I was curious to see if foreign exchange rate offered by Visa is better over Amex or vice versa. I used mid-market exchange rate from popular currency exchange website XE.com as benchmark. I analyzed my spends across several days and compared the exchange rate to benchmark.

NOTE: The mid-market are not transactional rates. Instead exchange rates are derived from the mid-point between the “buy” and “sell” transactional rates from global currency markets. This is for information purpose only and Consumer clients or small to medium sized businesses cannot access these rates.

American Express Foreign Exchange Rate Vs. Benchmark (XE.com) – Closer to Benchmark

As can be seen from the chart below the exchange rate offered by Amex has generally been lower than the benchmark mid-market rate on XE.com. There is only one instance on 4/Dec where the Amex rate is inline with XE.com

The variance between Amex exchange rate compared to benchmark XE.com in above chart shows on most days the variance was less that 0.2%. The worst performance was on 16/Dec which was -0.35% lower than benchmark. The negative variance range varied from -0.05% to -0.35%.

Looking at the Visa (Chase) chart below, it seems like Visa had some wild ride offering better exchange rate than XE.com on few days while offering much lower rates on other days.

Looking at the “Variance” chart below you notice Visa had better exchange rate than XE.com on 5, 10 and 11 Dec. Like Amex, the worst date for Visa was on 16/Dec which was 0.56% lower than benchmark XE.com

There were several days where the variance dipped below -0.3%. The negative variance range varied from -0.19% to -0.56% (a lot wider range compared to Amex)

American Express Vs. Visa Exchange Rate – Amex slightly better than Chase

Now coming to the interesting contest. As can be seen from the chart above when American Express and Visa go head to head, Amex almost always provides a slightly better exchange rate compared to Visa. But for all practical purpose the exchange rate difference between these two issuers is negligible.

As an example if on 16/Dec, you spent Indian Rupee 20,000 on shopping the USD equivalent difference in exchange rate between Amex and Visa would be less than a Dollar (Amex $283.08 vs Visa $283.67)

Conclusion

In conclusion, although American Express offers a slightly better foreign exchange rate than Visa the difference is negligible for all practical purpose.

So just go ahead and use any credit card that offers you better rewards and benefits!!