Well, exactly. But it would be the only option to “prevent” DCC from happening, since there is no control over what is happening before a payment hits Revoluts systems.
I rather have my transaction decline,than pay DCC😂
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This is pure sophistry on Mastercard’s part. They collude and enable and encourage DCC. In fact it’s a marketing tool from them to attract new merchants and traders.
Their Compliance code is a joke. They know about the widespread abuse. But so far have not clamped down on it in any meaningful way.
Yes, I phrased that wrong. The point still stands. Would it be possible in alignment with T&Cs to implement a technical solution like described that prevents DCC?
Just got off the phone with my legacy bank and I told them I wanted to block any non GBP transactions as I was thinking of travelling to the UK, in order to protect against DCC, and after talking to someone higher in the food chain they said it can be done, I just have to call them with a least a week in advance and they can do it.
This was Millennium BCP in Portugal. I remember a friend doing something similar a couple years ago when he went to the US
Edit: If you think about it, the bank has interest in doing this block as not only avoids possible chargebacks being opened, it also charges fees to do the conversion themselves
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There are plenty of cases of merchants blocking cards issued in another country and card issuers blocking usage in another country, primarily to prevent fraud. I see no reason why card issuers couldn’t similarly block particular currencies within the same rules.
As I said, my bank said they could do it, they just need advance notice, etc. as they’re a traditional bank, so everything is slow.
You have banks/card issuers charging cash advance fees for stuff that is not cash advance, they also block certain merchant categories and even block transactions from specific merchants such as coinbase for example.
It seems locking a specific currency would be much less aggressive than some of the stuff they already usually do
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Maybe they are not legally allowed to do that ? From the law, and from the contract they signed with MasterCard ?
Why would MasterCard contractually prevent a card issuer from blocking DCC? DCC is a scam by (and for the profit of) merchants and their banks, not by MasterCard or Visa.
I very much doubt that MasterCard contractually prevents Revolut from disabling DCC, just as MasterCard evidently doesn’t prevent Revolut from disabling online, contactless and swipe transactions.
The initial request of the topic isn’t about disabling DCC but disabling GPB payments, which is different.
And even if Revolut want to disable DCC I am not sure it’s possible since this is a Merchant/Merchant customer choice, Revolut just receive an amount to pay, they don’t know if the amount is “normal” or “DCC”
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Given that card issuers are evidently allowed to block or allow transactions in specific currencies, it follows that blocking or allowing transactions in specific currencies would also fall within the rules.
Sure you can block a whole card for security or AML reasons, you can block specific curencies, but I’ve never heard about a bank blocking the local currency of the card.
I know at least one country were it’s illegal ( France ), and knowing our UE geniuses it’s probably the same in the whole UE…
But maybe the law allow this in UK.
An alternate solution is to play with the monthly limit of your Revolut card :
You set the limit before the payment to = your current utilization + the amount you need to pay with interbank rate ( +1% in case of FX movement ).
If it’s working no DCC
If it’s not working : check the refused amount and talk to the merchant if it looks like a DCC fraud.
After the payment, reset your card monthly limit.
This is not perfect, you have to calculate and do some manual actions, but it will save some money 
You don’t seem to understand what we’re talking about here. It’s not “blocking” the local currency, but “locking” to it. It’s not illegal in France or the EU in general.
If in France the card would be locked to accept only transactions in euros. Why would it be illegal in France to pay in Euros?
Well the subject is “Option to disable GBP transactions to block [… ]” so…
What you are describing is exactly the opposite of what is needed
You don’t seem to understand what the issue is. The reason to disable GBP IS that DCC detects the card as GBP as it’s UK issued.
The issue with just disabling GBP is that you’d have to re-enable it when in the UK or when you wanted to pay in GBP and there might be DCC systems that choose some other random currency to convert to, so you would not be totally safe from DCC. Also discriminating one specific currency might violate some agreements Revolut might have.
If instead you lock to local currency, either automatically based on location or a currency you select manually, you are 100% protected from DCC and you have the freedom to choose what currency you want to use.
Not to mention you avoid any problems that would occur by discriminating a specific currency in all situations
To be fair, @mirron is right when pointing out that the thread started with “block GBP”. Like years ago.
But the idea was always about blocking DCC and not excluding a currency from withdrawals.
In the meantime, more and more customers have EUR as a base currency and also face notorious DCC in countries like Poland. And R. is on the jump to become available in North America and Asia. So the proposed solution in the first post transformed into an idea where not a single currency is blocked but a local currency is locked in as the one that is accepted exclusively. Only this way, DCC can be avoided.
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I agree : both solutions will work but locking a currency looks like overkill because it means blocking all other currencies…
R. announced to issue “local” cards in Spain. And cards in the US will probably US issued. So only “locking in” will sufficiently avoid DCC for all customers independently from their base currency. The proposed GBP block only works for UK customers with GBP as base currency.
OK so the solution is to issue local-based cards, one per currency.
Not at all. DCC happens when the merchant does not use the local currency. The currency of the card not matching the country code of the card is not relevant.
It would not improve the situation for UK customers. it would slightly improve the situation for EU customers in countries where DCC is common. Like Spain. In most EUR countries, DCC is only a problem at touristy places like Airports. And it’s usually easy to avoid.