PenFed Visa Foreign Transaction Fee (2025)

A couple of years ago, I used a PenFed Visa on foreign travel. To my delight, I received 1% rebates, and no foreign transaction fees on purchases and found that certain bank ATMs would dispense cash without any additional fees, whether local or from PF Visa.

While in the planning stages of another trip I looked at recent posts including the following:

Re: No Foreign Transaction Fee, No Annual Fee

Postby Watty » Wed Mar 12, 2014 4:26 pm
Check out the PenFed cards to see what their current offereings are. I have one of theirs that has those features and no cash advance fee so I use it to get cash out of ATM's when I am traveling overseas.

I also, googled the topic and found a variety of dated and conflicting information on foreign transaction fees.
http://www.cardhub.com/edu/foreign-transaction-fees/

Foreign Transaction Fee – Visa
As is the case with MasterCard, Visa does not charge any foreign transaction fees, given that they are determined independently by credit card issuers. Visa cards can be used at tens of millions of merchant locations and 1.8 million ATMs in over 200 of the roughly 260 countries and territories worldwide.

I checked PenFed's site and found the following dated May 2014.
https://www.penfed.org/search.aspx?sear ... es&sflag=s
Under ATMs it mentions International Transaction fee being up to 2%.

Next I sent an email to PF customer service inquiring as to the service fee. Not wanting to wait for the response I called PF CS. The phone rep informed me that there were no foreign transaction fees imposed by PF as was my experience previously. A few hours later I received an email response that contradicted the phone information.

Re: ATM Use in xxxxxx
To: xxxxxx
Thank you for contacting Pentagon Federal Credit Union.

VISA does charge a Foreign Transaction Fee of 2% of the transaction amount for
any card purchases made in a foreign country. The Foreign Transaction Fee is
added to your purchase amount after the foreign currency is converted.

However, none of our credit cards carry a foreign transaction fee.

I'd appreciate any first hand experience with a PF Visa card in the last couple of months regarding foreign transaction fees for purchases and ATM usage.

Used the PenFed Visa in Europe. No FTF, 1% back on all purchases. I was hoping for the regular 5/3/1 but I guess it only applies within the US.

On a related note, I just got information from PenFed CSR that I can simply split my credit line (Visa) to get an AMEX without a hard pull. I will go ahead with this so that I can maximize rewards and get 5% on airline purchases using the AMEX and still retain the Visa (reduced CL) for greater acceptability while traveling (apart from 5/3/1 rewards). I am awaiting further information on whether the rewards from both cards accumulate together as their redemption rates are the same (118~120 points = $1).

friar1610 wrote:Took a Danube River cruise in June. Used the PenFed Visa a few times. No foreign transaction fees.

As explained before, the fee is hidden in the exchange rate you get. I know, I travel extensively, but use their AX card.
Now, if you try to get cash in a foreign ATM, there is fee. I do not remember whatever is 1 or 2% because I use a Fidelity's Visa. They return any foreign fee on cash withdrawals.

OP here.

Just got back from Chile. No FT fee on purchases. I often received a conversion rate that exceeded the average of the daily high and lows posted on http://www.investing.com/currencies/usd ... rical-data for the day that the charge was posted.

Regarding ATM use, I was a little dismayed that my host and others readily accepted that their banks charged them either 3000 or 4000 pesos regardless of the size of cash withdrawal. I made only two ATM withdrawals since CC seemed to be much more widely accepted since my last visit. Since I withdrew, 150,000 and 100,000 pesos on the two transactions, the local fee was 2% on the first and 4% on the second. As expected, no additional fee was added by PenFed.

Most Chilean merchants required signatures, consistent with my host being unaware of CC chip technology. While all of the merchants requiring signatures also had a spot for passport IDs, I left it blank for all but two merchants that insisted. Only two merchants utilized PINs, with one of those also requiring a signature and the other not. The ATMs worked fine with the card/PIN.