Citi Double Cash Foreign Transaction Fees: 3% Explained

Quick Answer: Yes, the Citi Double Cash Card charges a foreign transaction fee: 3% of each purchase made in a currency other than U.S. dollars, after conversion to dollars. The fee itself earns no cash back, because Citi's rewards terms exclude account fees and charges. On foreign-currency spending, the 2% you earn does not cover the 3% you pay.

The Citi Double Cash foreign transaction fee is 3% of the U.S. dollar amount of every purchase made in a foreign currency, whether you are standing in a shop in Lisbon or buying from a website that bills in euros from your couch. The card has no annual fee and earns 2% on purchases, so foreign-currency spending costs you roughly 1% net before any exchange-rate spread.

What exactly does Citi charge?

Citi's own pricing for the card, read on its Citi Double Cash product page in October 2026, lists "Fee for foreign purchases – 3% of the U.S. dollar amount of each purchase." The pricing and information table on the application page words it as "Foreign Purchase Transaction: 3% of each purchase transaction in U.S. dollars."

The cardmember agreement Citi files with the CFPB is more precise about the trigger. Its fee table calls it a "Transaction Fee for Purchases in Foreign Currency" and says Citi charges it "for a Purchase made in a currency other than U.S. dollars, regardless of where the Transaction takes place or who the merchant is." That sentence answers most of the edge cases people ask about:

• What triggers it is the currency, not the country. A purchase billed in pesos, pounds or yen draws the fee even if the merchant is an American company.
• The base is the converted dollar amount. A €100 dinner that the card network converts to $108 costs $3.24 in fees.
• Exchange rate is separate. The agreement says the card network (Mastercard, for this card) picks the conversion rate and may use a rate from the day of conversion or the day before, so the dollar amount can differ from what you saw on a currency app.

The figures above come from Citi's pages as of October 2026. Card terms change, so check the current numbers on Citi's site before you rely on them.

Does the foreign transaction fee earn cash back?

No. The Double Cash pays its 2% as ThankYou Points: 1 point per $1 on purchases, plus 1 point per $1 on eligible payments, up to the balance in the card's Purchase Tracker. The rewards terms list what does not count as a purchase and earns no points, and that list includes "Card Account fees and charges (such as late fees and finance charges)." The foreign transaction fee is an account fee, so it falls in that group.

The purchase underneath still earns normally. Nothing in Citi's terms excludes purchases made abroad or in another currency, so a $108 dinner earns 2% on $108 and the $3.24 fee earns nothing.

One phrase in the exclusions trips people up: "foreign currency purchases" sits next to traveler's checks, money orders and wire transfers. That means buying currency itself, such as paying a currency exchange counter with the card. The agreement defines using your card "to get cash, including foreign currency" as a cash advance, which carries a cash advance fee of either $10 or 5%, whichever is greater, and a 29.99% variable APR that starts on the transaction date.

A two-week trip, worked through

Say you spend 14 days in Spain and put everything that bills in euros on the Double Cash. After conversion, your card shows $2,800 of euro-denominated purchases.

Two things make that number worse. First, the 2% is only fully earned when you pay: half the points come from eligible payments, and Citi says you do not earn points while the account is behind on the minimum payment. Second, if you carry the trip balance, the purchase APR of 18.49% to 28.74% (as of October 2026) applies, and one month of interest on $2,884 at 20% is about $48, more than the whole cash back amount.

If you also withdraw €200 from an ATM on the card, that is a cash advance. On roughly $216 converted, 5% is about $10.80, which beats the $10 minimum, so that is the fee, and cash advance interest runs from day one.

Online purchases, dollar pricing and refunds

Foreign websites that charge in dollars. Because the agreement ties the fee to the transaction currency, a purchase the merchant submits in U.S. dollars should not draw this fee. Check your statement after the first charge from a new overseas merchant; if a fee appears on a dollar charge, ask Citi about it.

"Pay in dollars?" at the terminal. When a shop or hotel abroad offers to charge you in dollars, the merchant converts the amount and, as the agreement puts it, "the third party chooses the conversion rate instead of the Card Network." You may avoid the 3% fee that way, but the merchant's rate often hides a larger markup. Compare the two prices on the screen before you accept.

Merchant surcharges. The agreement warns that some merchants, including those outside the U.S., add their own fee for paying by card. That surcharge is the merchant's, not Citi's, and it is added to the purchase amount.

Refunds. A merchant refund posts as a credit, and the purchase points are reduced by returns. Citi's documents do not say whether the original 3% fee is reversed when you return a foreign-currency purchase, and none of the pages we read describe a policy of refunding the fee on request. If a refund came through without the fee, calling Citi and asking costs you nothing, but there is no published promise.

How do you find the fees you have already paid?

Citi's pricing page and card agreement do not say how the fee is labeled on the statement or whether it posts as its own line or beside the purchase, so search each statement for "foreign" and for small charges that equal 3% of a nearby foreign-currency purchase. To total a year of them:

1. Download the monthly statement PDFs from your Citi account. Our Citi credit card statement download guide covers where the statements and the activity export live and how far back each goes.
2. For recent months, Citi's own transaction export may be enough: download it as a spreadsheet and filter the description column.
3. For older months, or when you want the statement exactly as issued, turn the PDFs into rows. You can copy tables out of the PDF with Excel's Get Data from PDF, or upload them to QuickBankConvert, which returns one row per transaction with the date, description and signed amount. The Double Cash to Excel guide walks through the columns you get.
4. In the sheet, filter descriptions containing "foreign" or "fee," then sum the amount column. A free account converts a few statements a month; a full year of PDFs needs a paid plan or a one-time pass, listed on pricing.

The total tells you what the card has actually cost you abroad, and it is the number to compare against a card's annual fee.

Which Citi cards have no foreign transaction fee?

These are the Citi card pages we could load in October 2026 and what each lists as its "Fee for foreign purchases":

The pattern is plain: the no-annual-fee Citi cards we read charge the 3%, and the ones that waive it carry an annual fee. A quick break-even: the Citi Strata Premier carries a $95 annual fee, and 3% of $3,167 is $95. If you spend less than about $3,200 a year in foreign currency, the fee savings alone will not repay that annual fee; the cards also earn rewards differently, so compare those using your own category totals from past statements.

Plenty of cards from other issuers have no foreign fee and no annual fee. Our comparison of cash back cards with no foreign transaction fee covers those, so this guide sticks to Citi.

What should you carry on a trip?

A practical setup for a Double Cash holder:

• A no-foreign-fee card for anything billed in local currency. Keep the Double Cash for home, where its flat 2% is strong.
• A debit card for cash. Taking cash on any credit card counts as a cash advance under Citi's terms; check your bank's own ATM fees before you go.
• The Double Cash as a backup. A 1% net cost is a small price if your main card is declined or lost, and the card is on the Mastercard network.
• Pay in local currency. Decline the offer to be charged in dollars unless the merchant's rate is clearly better.

Pay the statement in full when you get home. Interest on a carried balance outweighs any rewards math in this article.

For card fees and terms in general, the CFPB keeps a plain-language page on what to check before you use a credit card, which is the link Citi's own pricing table points to.

Related guides

• Cash back credit cards with no foreign transaction fee
• Citi credit card statement download: PDF and activity
• How to convert Citi Double Cash statements to Excel
• Citibank statement conversion
• Credit card statement to Excel