Cambodia eVisa Foreign Transaction Fee: What the Big Four Add to Your $80 USD (~$122 AUD) Charge

How the fee shows on a CBA, Westpac, NAB, or ANZ statement

Each Big Four bank labels the foreign-transaction fee slightly differently and shows it in a slightly different position on the transaction list. Knowing the exact phrasing helps you find it fast — and confirm that the eVisa charge itself settled cleanly with no surprise.

Walking through a CBA statement line by line

On a typical CBA Smart Access debit card the eVisa transaction lands as two adjacent lines on the same date. The first line is the main charge: our merchant descriptor followed by the AUD amount (somewhere in the $123-$124 AUD band depending on the rate at settlement and the embedded conversion margin). The second line is the fee: 'OS SVC FEE' or 'INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTION FEE' followed by the percentage value — usually around $3.66 AUD on the $80 USD Tourist visa. On a Business eVisa at $90 USD (~$137 AUD) the fee line is closer to $4.11 AUD. Both lines post within the same banking day; sometimes the fee posts a few hours after the main charge.

Westpac, NAB, and ANZ work the same way structurally — main charge plus a separate fee line below — with different label wording. Premium cards within each Big Four (CBA Ultimate Awards, Westpac Altitude Black, NAB Rewards Platinum on certain tiers, ANZ Rewards Black on certain tiers) sometimes waive the foreign-transaction fee, in which case the main charge still settles at the bank's conversion rate (with the 0.5-1% margin baked in) but no separate fee line appears. If you have a premium card it is worth checking the product disclosure statement before assuming you will be charged 3%.

If your card got declined at our checkout — separate problem from FX fees — the card decline fixes guide walks through the Big Four decline patterns including 3D Secure prompts that some banks throw on first-time USD merchants. The wider payment troubleshooting piece covers PayPal currency settings and the small handful of edge cases where the transaction does not settle cleanly first time.

The five Aussie cards that put the FX fee back at zero

If you fly internationally even once a year, an Aussie no-FX-fee card pays for itself within a single Cambodia trip. The setup time for any of the five below is between five and fifteen minutes — and once activated the card works for every USD or other non-AUD purchase you make, not just the eVisa. Here is what works cleanly on our Cambodia eVisa checkout in 2026.

On any of these the $80 USD (~$122 AUD) Tourist eVisa lands as a single line on your statement — our merchant descriptor and the AUD amount, nothing else. No second line for an FX fee. No 0.5-1% conversion margin (Wise is fully transparent; ING, Macquarie, Bankwest Breeze, and 28 Degrees apply the Visa or Mastercard network rate which sits at or near mid-market). The AUD on the statement matches the AUD on our checkout to within a cent or two of settlement-time drift.

Wise Debit is the fastest setup if you do not already have one

Wise's Aussie Borderless Debit account opens online in about ten minutes with a driver's licence or passport. A virtual card is issued immediately and works with Apple Pay or Google Pay for online purchases (including ours) within minutes. The physical card arrives in 7-10 business days. You can hold an AUD balance and convert to USD on demand at the live mid-market rate (with a transparent ~0.4% conversion fee shown upfront), or pay directly from AUD and let Wise convert at point of charge. Either way the cost is fully visible and there is no separate FX fee line on the statement.

Edge cases, wallets, and what to do if you have already paid

A few common questions come up around the Cambodia eVisa FX fee — Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, premium cards, what happens on a refund, and whether it is worth contesting the fee with the bank. Here is the short version.

Apple Pay and Google Pay inherit the linked card

Apple Pay and Google Pay are wallet wrappers — they pass the charge through to the underlying linked card. If you link a CBA credit card to Apple Pay, the 3% CBA foreign-transaction fee still applies on the eVisa. If you link a Wise debit or a Macquarie debit to Apple Pay, the zero-FX-fee policy still applies. The wallet does not change the fee structure either way.

PayPal does its own conversion, often worse than the bank

PayPal handles USD purchases by converting through its own rate, typically sitting 2.5-4% above mid-market. If you have a USD balance in PayPal, the charge settles in USD with no conversion at all (clean). If you fund from an AUD-linked source, PayPal converts USD to AUD using their own rate — comparable in total cost to a Big Four bank's combined fee, just bundled differently. The PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay support article walks through the wallet specifics in detail.

If you have already paid and copped the fee

If your eVisa already settled with a $3.66 AUD FX fee on a Big Four card, that fee is sunk — it would not be worth a dispute or a chargeback because the underlying merchant transaction is correct and the FX fee is contractually agreed in your card's product disclosure statement. The forward-looking move is to switch to a fee-free card for the next USD transaction — including the verified e-Arrival Card at $5 USD (~$7.50 AUD), where the same 3% would otherwise add about $0.22 AUD. Small individually, but the pattern repeats across every international purchase you make.

Refunds and the FX fee

If we refund the eVisa (within the cancellation window before processing has substantially started), your bank usually refunds its own FX fee too — because the FX fee is contingent on the underlying transaction and the network reverses both together. Some Big Four banks do this automatically within three to five business days; others require a phone call to flag the reversal. The cleanest avoidance path is a fee-free card from the start.

If you are weighing PayPal, Apple Pay, or Google Pay specifically, the wallet article covers each in detail. The refund and cancellation guide walks through our cancellation window and how the FX fee unwinds when a refund is processed.

Next steps and related reading for Australians: apply for your Cambodia eVisa when you are ready to lodge, bookmark our Cambodia visa hub for Australian citizens as the single canonical reference, skim the FAQ on Cambodia visa cost for quick answers, and use our glossary of Cambodia visa terms to decode any acronym in this guide.