Cambodia eVisa Foreign Transaction Fees Explained for Americans

Why a USD charge can still attract the fee

This is the section that resolves the confusion most cleanly. You see "$80.00 USD" at checkout, you approve it, and a few days later there is a 3% line beside it. Nothing went wrong, and nothing was hidden. Your card issuer flagged the charge as foreign because of where it was processed, and applied the foreign transaction fee written into your cardholder agreement.

Whether that happens to you comes down entirely to your own card, not to us. Some US cards waive foreign transaction fees as a standing benefit — most travel rewards cards and many premium cards do. Others, including a lot of everyday no-frills cards and store cards, still apply the fee on any internationally acquired charge. Two Americans paying the same $80 USD for the same eVisa can end up with different totals on their statements purely because they used different cards.

• The eVisa is billed in USD, so you are never converting currency and never exposed to an exchange-rate spread on our checkout.
• A foreign transaction fee, if your card charges one, is added by your issuer after the fact and shows as a separate line on your statement.
• The fee is typically about 3% — roughly $2.40 on an $80 Tourist eVisa, roughly $2.70 on a $90 Business eVisa.
• No-foreign-transaction-fee cards pay exactly the USD price. Many travel and premium cards fall in this bucket.
• Whether the fee applies is set by your bank, in your cardholder terms — it is not something the merchant can switch on or off.

If your card does get declined rather than charged a fee, that is a different issue — usually a fraud hold your bank places on an unfamiliar international merchant. Our guide on a declined card for Americans walks through the quick fixes for that.

How to check your own card before you pay

You do not have to guess. Every US card discloses its foreign transaction fee in plain language, and there are three reliable ways to confirm yours in about two minutes before you reach our checkout.

First, open your card's mobile app or log in online and look for the cardholder agreement, the rates-and-fees summary, or the benefits guide. Foreign transaction fees are always listed there, usually phrased as "X% of each transaction in US dollars" or "X% of each foreign transaction." If it reads "None" or "0%," you pay exactly the eVisa price. Second, search the card name plus "foreign transaction fee" — issuers publish this on their public product pages because it is a required disclosure. Third, if you would rather not dig, call the number on the back of the card and ask the one question: does this card charge a foreign transaction fee on charges processed outside the US?

The numbers above are illustrative at a 3% rate, which is the most common figure on US cards that charge the fee. Some issuers charge a touch less, a few charge slightly more, and a meaningful share charge nothing at all. Two minutes with your cardholder terms tells you exactly which column you are in before you spend a cent.

How to avoid the fee entirely

If your everyday card charges a foreign transaction fee, you have three clean ways to pay the Cambodia eVisa with zero markup — and none of them changes the eVisa price itself.

The simplest is to pay with a card that has no foreign transaction fee. A large number of US travel rewards cards and most premium cards waive it as a standing benefit, and plenty of mainstream no-annual-fee cards do too. If you have one in your wallet, use it for the eVisa and skip the surcharge entirely. This is the same card you would want for the rest of your Cambodia trip anyway, since hotels, tuk-tuks, and restaurants abroad attract the same fee.

The second route is a digital wallet. We accept PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, each of which pays through whichever card you have linked. Link a no-foreign-transaction-fee card to the wallet and the fee disappears the same way it would paying with that card directly. Link a fee-charging card, and the fee still applies — the wallet does not erase your issuer's terms, it just passes the charge through to the card behind it.

The third is to simply accept the fee on a charge this small. A 3% surcharge on an $80 USD Tourist eVisa is about $2.40 — less than a coffee, and a one-time cost on a single transaction. If you do not have a no-fee card handy and do not want to open one for a $2.40 saving, paying it and moving on is a perfectly rational choice. For a full rundown of which cards and wallets we accept, see our Cambodia eVisa payment methods for Americans guide; if you want a card recommendation specifically, our pick of the best no-foreign-transaction-fee card for the Cambodia visa goes deeper.

The e-Arrival Card and spending on the ground

The same logic carries through to the rest of your Cambodia spending. The e-Arrival Card — the separate, mandatory step every air arrival files — is $5 USD verified through us. Whether your card adds a foreign transaction fee to that $5 follows the exact same rule as the eVisa: it depends on your issuer, and a no-fee card pays exactly $5.

Once you land, foreign transaction fees become the running theme of the trip, not a one-off. Every card swipe at a hotel, every online booking with a Cambodian merchant, every restaurant tab on plastic can attract the same roughly 3% if your card charges it. This is why a no-foreign-transaction-fee card is worth sorting before you fly rather than just for the visa — the savings compound across a two-week trip far more than they do on a single $80 charge.

A quick note on cash, since Americans ask. Cambodia runs heavily on US dollars on the ground, so much of your in-country spending will be in physical USD with no card and no fee involved at all. That does not change anything about the eVisa, which is an online payment — but it does mean the foreign transaction fee question mostly matters for online and card spending, not for the dollars in your pocket. For the wider payment picture before you travel, our Cambodia eVisa payment methods guide for US citizens covers accepted cards, wallets, and security.

The bottom line before you pay

Put plainly: the Cambodia eVisa costs $80 USD for the Tourist eVisa and $90 USD for the Business eVisa, billed in dollars, approved in 3 business days, and delivered as a printable PDF by email. Those numbers do not move. The only variable is whether your own US card issuer adds its foreign transaction fee on top — a separate, after-the-fact line of about 3% that has nothing to do with our pricing.

Two minutes checking your cardholder terms tells you which side of that line you are on. Use a no-foreign-transaction-fee card or a wallet linked to one, and you pay the exact USD price. Use a fee-charging card, and you pay about $2.40 more on the Tourist eVisa — small, predictable, and entirely your bank's charge, not ours.

Next steps and related reading for Americans: apply for your Cambodia eVisa when you are ready to pay, compare every accepted card and wallet in our Cambodia eVisa payment methods for Americans guide, see the line-by-line breakdown in the Cambodia visa cost for Americans guide, and bookmark the Cambodia visa for United States citizens hub as your single reference for everything else.