Does the Prime Visa charge foreign transaction fees?

no foreign transaction fees (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11). Chase spells it out on the card page: you will pay no foreign transaction fees when you use your card for purchases made outside the United States.

Two things are worth noticing about that sentence. First, it is unconditional — there is no minimum, no category limit, and no requirement to notify anyone before you travel. Second, it is about purchases made outside the United States, which is a slightly different thing from “purchases in a foreign currency”. In practice the two overlap almost completely, and the absence of the fee covers both the obvious case (paying a restaurant in euros) and the less obvious one (buying from an overseas merchant online while sitting at home).

Foreign transaction fees are charged as a percentage of every converted purchase, so the saving scales with how much of your spending happens abroad. It is easiest to see as a table. The 3% column is the rate most commonly charged by cards that do have the fee; we are using it as an illustration rather than quoting any particular card.

The row that changes the argument is the last one. For somebody who travels twice a year, the fee saving alone is worth more than most of the rewards a $0-fee card produces on everyday spending — and it accrues without you doing anything or remembering anything.

It is also worth putting next to a card built explicitly for travelers. The Costco Anywhere Visa also charges no foreign transaction fees on purchases (Citi — Costco Anywhere Visa, verified 2026-08-12), and it is a card with a membership attached, just like this one. The difference is that the Prime Visa gives you the fee-free travel behavior even if the membership lapses — the fee structure is a property of the card, not of the membership. We compare the two in full on Prime Visa vs the Costco Anywhere Visa.

No fee is not the same as good rewards. Take the card abroad and the earning structure gets thin fast, because two of the three tiers are domestic in practice.

The 5% does not travel. It applies to Amazon.com, Audible.com, Whole Foods Market and Chase Travel, with an eligible Prime membership (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11). And Chase is explicit that the bonus rate is not earned on purchases from merchants using Amazon Pay, on purchases at international Amazon retail sites, or on purchases made directly with travel suppliers including airlines, hotels, car rentals and cruises (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-12). So buying from Amazon.co.uk while you are in London earns the base rate, not 5%, even though it feels like an Amazon purchase in every other respect.

The 2% partly does. The mid tier covers gas stations, restaurants, and local transit and commuting (including rideshare) (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11). Restaurants and local transit are exactly what you spend on abroad, and nothing in Chase’s wording limits those categories to the United States. Whether an individual foreign merchant is coded as a restaurant is the merchant’s business, not Chase’s, so treat this as likely rather than guaranteed.

Everything else is 1%. 1% back (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-11) is what a hotel, a museum ticket or a shop purchase earns overseas. That is a low rate, and it is the honest reason this is a card to travel with rather than a card to travel on.

There is a second currency cost that has nothing to do with your card issuer, and it is the one that actually catches people out.

When you pay abroad, the terminal will often ask whether you want to be charged in dollars or in the local currency. Choosing dollars hands the conversion to the merchant’s payment processor instead of to the card network — a practice usually called dynamic currency conversion — and the exchange rate they use is set by them, not by Visa. Accepting it can wipe out the entire value of a fee-free card in a single transaction.

The rule is simple and it never changes: always choose the local currency. Pay in euros in Spain, yen in Japan, pounds in the UK. The card network converts at its own rate, Chase adds no fee on top, and you get the outcome the card is advertising. Say yes to dollars and you have paid a fee anyway, just to somebody else.

The same applies at ATMs, with an extra wrinkle: a cash withdrawal on a credit card is a cash advance, and cash advances are not purchases. Chase is explicit that balance transfers, cash advances and cash-like transactions including travelers checks, foreign currency, money orders, wire transfers and cryptocurrency do not count as purchases and earn no points (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-12). So an ATM withdrawal on this card earns nothing, and carries its own fee and interest treatment. Use a debit card for cash.

Carry it, pay in local currency, use it for restaurants and transit where the 2% may apply, and do not expect the Amazon rate to follow you across a border. Keep a debit card for cash. If a rental car is part of the trip, read what the card’s auto rental coverage actually covers before you decline the rental desk’s insurance, because that benefit has real conditions attached.