Updated rates of purchase/sale of UAH/USD and UAH/EUR foreign currency pairs on non-cash currency conversion during payment cards transactions by customers are set by the bank on a daily basis and are available in sections VISA debit cards and Corporate cards Visa Business.

To EUR operations made with the UAH account card at the stage of writing-off the funds, the EUR selling rate is applied for such operations, set on writing-off date. The same is for USD operations - the writing-off of funds from UAH account is made at the rate of USD sales, set for such operations by the bank on the day of writing-off.

At the same time, blocking on the UAH account the transaction sum at the time of its caring out (i.e. a few days before the actual write-offs) can be carried out both at the rate of Visa Int. international payment system and at the bank rate at the date of the transaction. Thus, blocked and the actual written-off sum may vary.

Accordingly the writing-off, during the UAH operations made with the USD or EUR account, is performed at the rate of USD or EUR purchase established by the bank for such operations at the day of writing-off. Blocking the relevant sum at the time of the operation in this case is carried out at the bank’s rate at the date of the operation that in case of strong fluctuations of the market rate can also lead to the difference between the blocked and actually written-off amount.

As Katerina Vinnitskaya, Deputy Director of Retail Banking Director of Piraeus Bank informed: “Bank constantly monitors fluctuations and at the time of the transaction, its blocked on the customer's account, in case of necessity may block extra UAH amount in order to prevent unauthorized overdraft on the account of the client. When the writing-off from the account is completed, the amount becomes unblocked and available to customers again. We strongly recommend to our customers when traveling abroad or making payments in Internet to have a surplus of funds in the UAH accounts in order to minimize the incidence of unauthorized overdraft on the account related to the difference in rates.”

Let us inform you, that when paying for goods and services, as well as withdrawing cash abroad with a payment card the transaction involves two stages. First is blocking the required sum at the account at the time of the transaction calculated at the rate of the respective currency set by the international payment system or bank on the day of the transaction. Second is writing-off from the card account, which according to the rules of international payment system, which takes 2-30 days after the transaction at the rate set by the bank for transactions with payment cards on the date of writing-off. Due to the delay between the block and the writing-off of the amount, currency fluctuations may cause the difference between the amount blocked and written off from the card account funds.

Exchange rates for transactions with payment cards may differ from the official rate of the National Bank of Ukraine and commercial rates of the bank for the purchase and sale of foreign currency in cash. If you have additional questions, please contact the Call Center of the bank: 0 800 30 888 0 (calls from landlines within Ukraine are free, mobile - according to the tariffs of operators).