Yeah, I had an Amex card and it was pretty useless in Europe. Admittingly that was more than five years ago so maybe things have improved by now.
no foreign transaction fees
What you really want to see is a combined promise. For example: No fees, plus 1% or less FX spread on major currencies. (My preferred credit card promises that.)
Honestly, it is very hard to pay a total of less than 1% on foreign transactions. Still, this is pretty cheap, given the convenience.
For a major currency pair, like EUR-USD or JPY-USD, you can see that it's less than a tenth of a cent off the 'real' rate.
The banks don't control the exchange rate, it's determined by the card network. So yes, when a card advertises 0% foreign transaction fee, it really does mean that they don't take an additional charge on top of the spread (which they don't control or profit from).
It's in fact quite easy to pay less than 100bps for a foreign currency transaction; everybody with a 0% FTF card is doing it right now (especially for high volume corridors like EUR/USD).
> No fees, plus 1% or less FX spread on major currencies. (My preferred credit card promises that.)
You bank can't promise what they don't control; Visa and Mastercard determines FX rates, and they're below 100bps because of an old settlement. So the bank is promising you something they had no role in creating; you're the one here falling for the marketing, not everybody else.
I would argue that you are not looking hard enough if you're paying 1% on FX card transactions.
All you need is a multi-currency card from one of the Fintechs, that will get you down to 0.5% or less without any effort.
Of course if you're the sort of person who likes taking cash out of ATMs on holiday then you'll have to look harder, since there is usually a surcharge on ATM withdrawls. But even then its not impossible.
High-end businesses accept Amex, because it's worth it. Major chains can probably negotiate good deals. Tiny/seasonal businesses often use middlemen like Zettle that charge high fees and accept almost every payment method imaginable. Those in the middle who use traditional payment terminals and pay list prices may still avoid Amex due to the high fees.
Visa's highest tier cards (Visa Infinite cards, such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve), already have higher fees than the Amex Platinum. The difference is, Visa won't let merchants ban single cards (you have to accept ALL Visa cards), while banning Amex meaning you are banning mostly high tier cards and losing nothing on the low end.
With Amex, Amex themselves are both the issuer and the acquirer, so there is no interchange to regulate.
https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...
The beauty if going with AMEX, if that's what they'll do, it that it's a one stop shop. No need to go through a bank to issue a credit card, just deal with the credit card company directly. Currently the card is pretty much useless, but it does fit Apples way of doing things, cutting out the middle man.
For American Express it could also help make them relevant as a card company again. If they have plans to expand beyond the US, this might be a good way to do it. Companies will want to be able to accept Apples card, even if that means signing up with AMEX. Then in a few years, AMEX can start pushing their own branded cards which will now be more widely accepted.
The foreign transaction fees are steep.