Optional Issuer Fee

Republic Bank advises its credit card customers that the Optional Issuer Fee (OIF), that has been in effect for transactions that carry a currency conversion, will now also be applied to transactions that are performed with Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC).

What is Optional Issuer Fee (OIF)?
OIF is a fee applied on credit card transactions that involve a currency conversion i.e. any transaction where the base currency has to be converted to TT$ or US$. For example, if you purchased an item for €100 Euros, this transaction will be subjected to an OIF (2.5%) as a currency conversion will take place from Euros to U.S. dollars.

What is Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC)?
DCC is a feature that allows cardholders to be billed in their home currency for card transactions performed in a different currency. For example, an item that costs US$100.00, you may receive a prompt that asks if you are interested in seeing this US$100.00 reflected as TT$ (home currency) on your credit card account. If you select yes, the exchange rate plus a margin added by the merchant (DCC markup) is applied to the transaction and reflected in TT$ on your credit card account. This results in a more costly transaction to you, the customer. As such, we encourage you to conduct your transactions in the base currency, where available.

DCC transactions were not subjected to the OIF prior and will now be part of the OIF, which will take effect on May 20, 2023.

These changes do not affect the operations of your credit card and all other terms and conditions remain applicable.

Should you have any questions please contact our Customer Care Centre at 627-3348 or email at email@rfhl.com.