Displayed currency and the amount your card is charged

We display several currencies so plans are easy to compare, but the payment itself settles in the processor's currency. Your bank then converts at its own rate on the day it posts, which need not match the rate used on screen.

What creates the difference

• Your issuer's exchange rate on the posting date
• The foreign transaction fee some banks add
• Choosing to let a merchant convert for you, which usually gives a worse rate

Matching a statement line to an order

1. Find the order number in your confirmation email
2. Compare the transaction date, not the posting date
3. If the gap looks wrong, send us the statement line and we will check it against our record

Read the refund policy

The path a price travels before it reaches your statement

The number you see on the page and the number your bank takes from the account are not produced by the same party, nor at the same moment. Between the two sit several stages: the display on the site, the transaction passing to the payment processor, the authorisation by your card issuer, and the settlement itself, which may land a day or two later. Each stage gives the figure a chance to shift slightly.

Once the sequence is clear, the small differences that looked suspicious become explicable, and more usefully you can tell which kind of difference is the ordinary arithmetic of currency conversion and which kind genuinely deserves a question.

There is no single exchange rate

People talk about the exchange rate as though there were one number per day. In practice several layers of rate touch a single payment. The rate you see on a search engine or a finance app is an interbank reference figure, which is not the one a consumer actually transacts at. The rate that applies to your card payment comes from the card network and from your own issuer.

That is why multiplying by a rate found online and expecting it to match the statement usually fails: not because anyone overcharged, but because two different rates are in play. If you want to know which rate your issuer uses and how it applies fees, that information sits in the terms of that particular card, and it varies by bank and by card type.

The line items on a statement, and who put them there

Not everything on a statement comes from the seller. Some of it is added by your own issuer, and depending on the bank it can appear as a separate line or folded into the same amount. The table below sets out what comes from where.

When you are offered the choice to pay in your home currency

Paying abroad, whether at a card terminal or on a checkout page, you are sometimes offered the option to be billed in your home currency instead of the merchant's. It looks friendly because you immediately see a number in a currency you know. What happens underneath is an extra conversion, at a rate set by a provider on the merchant's side rather than by your bank.

Whether it works out cheaper depends on both parties' rates that day, which is hard to compare while standing at a terminal. What you can do is know the option exists and understand that once you accept the merchant's conversion, the rate you get is no longer your issuer's.

The pending amount and the posted amount are not the same number

After you pay, many banks show the transaction as pending straight away. That figure is a hold on your credit line, not the amount finally taken. When the transaction settles a business day or two later it becomes a posted amount, and the number can move a little, because the rate used on the settlement date need not match the one used at authorisation.

Comparing figures while a transaction is still pending is therefore misleading more often than not. If you spot a difference on day one, wait a couple of business days and look at the posted amount before drawing a conclusion.

Working out where a charge came from, one step at a time

When you need to establish which order a charge belongs to, the sequence below moves from the easiest information to find towards the hardest. Most cases resolve within the first three steps.

1. 1Open the order confirmation emailFind the order number, the transaction date and the total shown in the email. That is the reference set you will compare everything else against.
2. 2Compare the transaction date, not the posting dateStatements usually show two dates. Match on the transaction date, since the posting date depends on the bank's processing cycle and can fall several days later.
3. 3Read the merchant name on the lineThe name on a statement is not always the name of the site you bought from, because the payment system may show the processor instead. If it looks unfamiliar, check it against the confirmation email before concluding that the charge is not yours.
4. 4Compare amounts only once the charge has postedIf the line is still pending, wait until it posts before comparing numbers, because a pending amount can still change.
5. 5Separate any fee from the price of the itemIf the amount is slightly higher than expected, check whether your bank charges a foreign transaction fee and whether it itemises it or folds it in. That is set out in the card's terms.
6. 6If it still does not reconcile, send it to usSend the order number, the transaction date and an image of the statement line with the card number and any unrelated personal details covered. We will compare it against our own record.

Why a refund can come back as a different number

When a refund is issued on a cross-currency payment, the amount returned may not equal the amount taken. The reason is simple: the refund is another conversion, made on the day it is processed. If the rate moved between the payment and the refund, the figure moves with it, and you can end up slightly above or slightly below the original.

The other source of mismatch is the foreign transaction fee. Some banks do not return it when a payment is refunded, which is that issuer's policy rather than anything the seller controls. Questions about it have to go to your own bank.

Credit cards, debit cards, wallets and multi-currency cards

Different payment methods behave differently around currency conversion, not because one is inherently better but because each involves a different set of intermediaries and terms. The table below sets out what to check before using each.

Why small differences appear even with no fee involved

Even with a card that charges no foreign transaction fee at all, the figure can still differ slightly from what appeared on screen. The cause is rounding: every conversion has to be rounded to the smallest unit the currency actually uses, and where there is more than one conversion there is more than one rounding.

Differences of this kind are tiny and are simply how cross-currency payment works. What deserves attention is a difference that is conspicuously large, or a charge you do not recognise at all, which is a separate matter entirely.

Before reporting a charge as unrecognised, check these first

Reporting a suspicious charge to your bank is your right and worth doing when it is warranted, but a good number of charges that look odd at first have an ordinary explanation. Running through the list below takes a few minutes and saves time on both sides.

• The merchant name may be the payment processor rather than the site you bought from
• The amount can differ because of conversion and rounding
• The date shown may be the posting date, which lags the day you ordered
• A family member holding a supplementary card may have made the purchase
• A pending line can still change before it settles
• Check other mail folders for the confirmation; it sometimes lands in spam

What to send when you want us to check something

If an amount does not match and you would like us to check it against our record, sending the full set of details in the first message shortens the whole exchange considerably. There is not much to it: the order number, the email address used for the order, the transaction date, the amount as it appears on the statement, and the currency charged.

Reach us on LINE at https://lin.ee/skDPoNx (@esimonline), by email at esimonline.asia@gmail.com, or by phone at 089-942-0818 or 088-521-6848. We take messages around the clock, every day, though a case that needs a supplier-side check can take longer than a quick one.

Read the payment questions in the help centre

Keeping records for an expense claim

If you need to claim the cost back at work, keep two things together: the order confirmation, which describes what was bought, and an image of the card statement line, which shows what was actually charged. They answer two different questions for a finance team: what you bought, and what you really paid.

Receipts follow the currency actually charged so that they reconcile against the card statement. If your finance team needs a figure in another currency, work from the statement amount, because that is what genuinely left your account.

Contact the team with your order details