A non sterling transaction fee is the percentage your UK card issuer adds when a payment goes through in a currency other than pounds. On standard current accounts and credit cards it usually sits just under 3%: Lloyds lists 2.99% (plus 50p a purchase) on its Classic and Basic debit cards, HSBC 2.75% on most debit accounts and 2.99% on its credit cards. It is your bank’s charge, not the merchant’s, and it appears on your statement, never on the invoice.
On an iDrive booking the fare is set in Pakistani rupees. If you paid in rupees, your bank converted the amount to pounds and added its fee, which is why the statement figure is higher than any pound estimate you saw. If you chose pounds at checkout, the conversion was done by us at a rate and margin shown before you paid, and your bank should not add a currency fee. The one exception, a cross-border fee based on where the merchant is registered, is covered below. Your statement line tells you which case you are in.
The quick diagnosis: which of three things happened
Most “why is my card charge different from the price” questions come down to one of three situations. Find yours before you ring anyone.
| What you chose at checkout | What your statement shows | Who converted | Bank fee likely? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay in PKR | A rupee amount, a sterling equivalent, often a separate fee line | Your card scheme (Visa or Mastercard), on the day it processed the payment | Yes, unless your card is fee-free abroad |
| Pay in GBP | The exact pound figure from the pay page | iDrive, before the payment was taken | Usually no currency fee; check for a cross-border charge |
| Pay in another currency (US dollars, euros) with a UK card | That currency, then a sterling equivalent and a fee | Both: us to your chosen currency, then your scheme to pounds | Yes, and you pay two conversions |
The third row is the expensive one. It tends to happen when a relative in the US or Europe shares a payment link and the page was left on dollars or euros. A UK card paying in dollars gets converted twice. If your card is in pounds, pick PKR or GBP, nothing else.
What the non sterling transaction fee is, and when UK banks apply it
Every UK bank has its own name for the same idea, which makes statement reading harder than it needs to be. On the published tariffs we checked:
- Lloyds calls it a “foreign currency transaction fee” on debit cards (2.99% plus a £0.50 purchase fee on Classic and Basic cards, nil on Club, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Premier, Student and Graduate accounts) and a “non-sterling purchase fee” of 2.95% on credit cards.
- Halifax charges a 2.99% foreign currency transaction fee on most debit cards plus a flat £0.50 “foreign currency purchase fee” per purchase, and 2.95% on most credit cards. Reward, Ultimate Reward and Student or Graduate debit cards, and the Clarity credit card, carry no fee.
- HSBC uses the term “non-sterling transaction fee”: 2.75% on standard and Premier debit accounts, 0.00% on its Global Money Account, and 2.99% on its credit cards.
The trigger is the transaction currency, not where you are standing. A booking paid in rupees from a sofa in Bradford is treated the same as a purchase in a shop in Lahore. Online and in person make no difference to the fee.
Two more details catch people out. First, the exchange rate itself is not your bank’s own: Lloyds converts using the Visa or Mastercard scheme rate, and HSBC says Visa applies its rate on the day it processes the transaction, which may differ from the day the transaction took place. That processing day can fall after you paid, so the sterling amount can move slightly between the pending entry and the final one. Second, the fee is sometimes shown as its own line and sometimes folded into the converted amount. Your bank’s app or statement key will say which.
You can get a feel for the scheme rate with the Visa exchange rate calculator, which Visa describes as an indication of the rate you may receive, not a promise.
Charged in pounds but fee applied: merchant location versus billing currency
This is the complaint that generates the angriest emails, and it has a real explanation. Currency is only one of two things a card issuer looks at. The other is where the merchant’s payment account is registered.
Stripe, the card-payment processor, puts it plainly in its developer documentation on currencies: if the charge currency differs from the card’s currency, the customer’s bank might charge a foreign exchange fee, and the bank “might also charge the customer if the payment method and your business are in different countries, regardless of the currency used.” In other words, a sterling payment to a merchant registered abroad can still attract a charge on some cards. Whether yours does is set by your card terms, not by the merchant.
So if you see “charged in pounds but fee applied”, check three things in your banking app:
- The merchant country shown against the transaction. Some apps display it, some only show it on the full statement.
- The fee name. A “non-sterling” or “foreign currency” fee on a pound transaction is worth querying with the bank. A “cross-border” or “overseas” charge may be exactly what your tariff allows.
- Whether the entry is still pending. Pending amounts are sometimes estimates and can be restated when the payment settles.
Paying in pounds is not the same as the card-machine trap
Bank guidance tends to warn against paying in pounds abroad. Lloyds, for example, says “it’s often better to pay in the local currency, if the card reader gives you the option”, because choosing pounds hands the conversion to the machine’s provider rather than the card scheme. That advice is about dynamic currency conversion at a terminal or cash machine, where the rate is shown only for a moment and the markup is rarely stated.
The GBP option on an iDrive pay page is still a merchant-side conversion, so the same logic applies in principle: someone is converting, and someone is charging for it. The difference is disclosure. Our Terms of Hire state that fares are set in PKR, that a customer may pay in pounds, dollars, euros and other major currencies, and that the reference rate and the conversion margin are shown and fixed at the moment you pay. You can compare that margin against your bank’s fee before you commit, which you cannot do at a restaurant terminal in Clifton.
The honest rule of thumb:
- Standard card with a fee of around 2.75% to 2.99%: compare the GBP figure on the pay page with the rupee fare converted at the scheme rate plus your fee. Pick the lower.
- Fee-free travel card: paying in PKR usually gets you the plain scheme rate with nothing added by your bank, so it is normally the cheaper route.
- Company card where finance wants the invoice and statement to match to the penny: GBP removes a moving part, even if it costs slightly more.
Invoice amount versus statement amount: reconciling it line by line
The invoice and the statement answer different questions. The invoice says what the service cost and in what currency you agreed to pay. The statement says how many pounds left your account once the card scheme and your bank had finished with it. They only match when you paid in pounds and nothing else intervened.
Here is a worked example. The figures are illustrative, chosen to make the arithmetic easy to follow; they are not a quote or a live rate.
Example: a Rs 20,000 airport-to-city journey
| Line | Paid in PKR, 2.75% debit card (HSBC-style) | Paid in PKR, 2.99% + £0.50 debit card (Lloyds Classic or Halifax-style) | Paid in PKR, fee-free card |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invoice total | Rs 20,000 | Rs 20,000 | Rs 20,000 |
| Scheme rate on processing day (example: Rs 376 to £1) | £53.19 | £53.19 | £53.19 |
| Percentage fee | 2.75% = £1.46 | 2.99% = £1.59 | £0.00 |
| Flat per-purchase fee | £0.00 | £0.50 | £0.00 |
| Total from your account | £54.65 | £55.28 | £53.19 |
If the same customer had chosen GBP on the pay page, the statement would show exactly the pound figure the page displayed, and the reconciliation is one line long. Whether that pound figure is higher or lower than £54.65 or £55.28 depends on the day’s reference rate and the margin, which is why the pay page shows both.
The five things to put side by side
- Booking reference from the confirmation email and invoice.
- Invoice total and its currency. For an iDrive booking this is the rupee fare, plus the charged amount if you paid in another currency.
- Statement amount and the currency shown next to it. A rupee figure beside the pound figure means your bank did the conversion.
- Any fee line dated the same day or the next, often labelled with the merchant name.
- Posting date versus payment date. A gap of a day or two explains small differences from the rate you looked up.
If all five line up and the fee matches your bank’s published tariff, nothing is wrong. You have paid for a conversion. If the fee is larger than your tariff, or appears on a pound transaction with a UK-registered merchant, that is a question for the bank.
Refunds move the numbers again
A card refund normally goes back in the currency you were charged in. If you paid in rupees, the refund is converted back to pounds at the scheme rate on the day it is processed, which is unlikely to be the rate on the day you paid. The difference can go either way. Whether your bank also reverses the original non-sterling fee is its own policy, so ask it directly. Paying in GBP avoids this drift entirely, because a pound charge is refunded in pounds. The detail of what is refundable and when is in our refund policy.
Fee-free travel cards: what they remove and what they do not
If you travel to Pakistan every year for weddings, Eid or family business, the fee is worth designing out rather than arguing about. Several UK providers publish no-fee options:
- Starling says it charges no transaction fees for spending abroad and passes on the Mastercard exchange rate with no extra commission. Cash withdrawals abroad carry no Starling fee up to a daily limit of £300 in the local-currency equivalent.
- Lloyds charges nil on its Club, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Premier, Student and Graduate debit cards.
- Halifax charges nothing on Reward, Ultimate Reward and Student or Graduate debit cards, or on the Clarity credit card.
- HSBC’s Global Money Account lists 0.00% for non-sterling transactions.
Tariffs change, so read the current page for your own account before relying on any of this.
What a fee-free card does not remove: the scheme exchange rate itself, any conversion done by the merchant if you pick a currency other than the one being priced, any charge an ATM operator adds (Starling itself notes that some card machines and ATMs may still charge their own fee), and the refund-rate drift described above. It removes your bank’s layer, which on the Rs 20,000 example is £1.46 to £2.09. On a week of car-and-driver hire for a family wedding, that layer grows in proportion.
Querying or reclaiming the charge
Start with who actually took the money. The non sterling transaction fee is levied by your card issuer under your account terms. Our Terms of Hire say so directly: conversion fees, exchange-rate spreads or foreign-transaction charges applied separately by your own card issuer or bank are outside iDrive’s control. We cannot refund a fee we never received, and a fee that matches the bank’s published tariff is simply the price of the conversion you agreed to.
That still leaves real routes when something is genuinely wrong:
- The fee does not match the tariff. Screenshot your bank’s fee table and the transaction, then raise it with the bank. A typical fixable case is a currency fee on a pound transaction that should not have attracted one.
- You were charged twice, or the wrong amount. Contact us first with the booking reference and the statement lines, so the payment record can be checked against what your bank shows. A pending entry and a settled entry for the same payment can look like two charges for a day or two.
- The service was not provided. Our cancellation policy and refund policy set out what is returned and when. If a dispute cannot be resolved with us, your card issuer’s chargeback process exists for exactly this.
- You paid by credit card and the booking was over £100. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 can make the card provider jointly liable with the supplier for misrepresentation or breach of contract, for items with a cash price above £100 and up to £30,000. Your card provider will tell you how to make a claim.
When you contact your bank, give it the booking reference, the invoice currency, the amount you agreed to pay and the statement line. A precise question gets a precise answer.
Company cards and expense coding
For a finance team the question is not why the charge differs, but how to book it so an auditor does not ask twice. A clean approach for Pakistan ground transport:
- Record the cost at the statement amount. That is what the company actually paid. The rupee invoice is the evidence of what was bought; the statement is the evidence of what it cost in pounds.
- Split the fee from the fare where the statement shows it separately. Code the journey to travel or ground transport and the fee to bank charges or foreign-exchange costs. Lumping them together overstates the travel spend and hides a cost you could remove with a different card.
- Attach both documents. Invoice showing the booking reference, route, date and currency; statement extract showing the matching line and fee.
- Note the implied rate. Rupee total divided by the sterling amount before fees. It takes ten seconds and answers the “why this rate” question before it is asked.
- Check your policy’s reference rate, if it has one. HMRC publishes monthly exchange rates on the UK Trade Tariff service, set at midday the day before publication and applying to the following calendar month, so they will not match a card scheme’s daily rate. If your policy names a source, follow the policy.
A team booking regularly for staff or visiting clients may prefer to standardise on GBP payment for exactly this reason: one currency, one figure, no reconciliation. Our business travel car service page covers arranging cars and drivers for staff and visiting clients.
Paying for someone else, and paying from the Gulf
The payer and the passenger are often different people: a son in Manchester paying for his parents’ airport ride from Islamabad, an uncle in Riyadh paying for a baraat convoy in Sialkot. The currency logic is the same, but the card’s home currency changes. A Saudi card paying in pounds or rupees is converted by the Saudi issuer under its own fee terms; a UK card paying in anything other than pounds meets the UK bank’s fee. Match the payment currency to the card, not to where the passenger is.
If you are arranging a ride for relatives rather than yourself, our sister service Pakistan Taxi has a practical guide to booking and paying for someone else’s airport ride, including whose details go where. For the booking mechanics from overseas, see how to book a taxi in Pakistan from the UK.
Before you pay: a two-minute check
Find the foreign-currency line in your bank’s fee table, then put the rupee fare and the pound figure on the pay page side by side. Rupee fare divided by the day’s scheme rate, plus your fee, is your cost in PKR; compare it with the GBP figure and choose one of the two. Never a third currency on a UK card.
When you are ready, start from the iDrive booking page: choose the route, vehicle and date, and the fare and payment currency options appear at the secure checkout before anything is charged.
Questions people ask
Is a non sterling transaction fee the same as a foreign transaction fee on an online booking?
Yes. Banks use different names for it: Lloyds and Halifax say “foreign currency transaction fee” on debit cards, HSBC says “non-sterling transaction fee”. All apply to purchases in a currency other than pounds, online or in person.
Why is there a bank fee for paying in rupees when I booked from the UK?
The fee follows the transaction currency, not your location. If you pay a rupee amount with a sterling card, your card scheme converts it and your bank adds its percentage. Choosing GBP at checkout, or using a fee-free card, avoids your bank’s currency fee.
Can iDrive refund the fee my bank charged?
No. The fee is levied by your card issuer and never reaches us. If you believe it was charged in error, for example on a pound transaction, raise it with your bank using its published fee table.
