Travelex, the leading foreign exchange and international payments company, today announced the launch of Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) services for US banks, particularly those offering foreign exchange services through ATM machines.

US banks can now offer inbound visitors exchange rate certainty when they withdraw local currency with a non-domestic card. Travelex’s DCC solution provides foreign cardholders with the option to have the transaction converted into their domestic currency when they make an ATM, POS or E-commerce withdrawal abroad.

Travelex is launching DCC at Sibos, as it believes that the US could become the largest market for it, based on inbound travel spend worth US$85.7bn¹. Inbound travel is predicted to reach 54.1m trips into the US with the majority of travellers coming from Mexico, Canada, the UK and Japan.

Based on this high inbound travel spend in the US, as well as market data which indicates that ATM withdrawals account for 20 per cent of total spend², Travelex believe that US banks and ATM networks are missing out on a possible $171.4m revenue opportunity from inbound travellers making currency withdrawals³.

David Sear from Travelex highlights the importance of foreign exchange to the banking industry, “Our DCC solution is designed to be a simple add-on to the existing estates of banks and ATM operators. It provides an opportunity for banks to capture foreign exchange revenues at ATM and add an incremental revenue stream cost effectively, which at the same time meets the customer demand to complete transactions in their domestic currency.

“With DCC already being fully operational in the Australian market, and now being launched in the US, we are expecting to also roll out the offering in Europe in 2008.”

¹ UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, June 2007
² UNWTO; APACS; Eden McCallum analysis
³ Supported by data from The Nilson Report (July 2006) which estimates that global issuer/acquirer currency conversion fees (Visa/Mastercard members only) totalled $3.7bn in 2005 of which only 5.4% is currently captured through DCC

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Notes to Editor:

Travelex is the world's foreign exchange and business payments specialist. Operating through subsidiaries and branches in four regions: the United Kingdom; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA); Americas and Asia Pacific.

As one of the world's leading providers of outsourced travel money to banks, travel agencies and other retailers it provides products including its prepaid travel card Cash Passport to over three million channel customers annually. Through its world-leading automation Travelex offers consumers a full range of delivery channel options including telephone and web-based ordering.

www.travelex.com | www.cashpassport.com