Grab is not very transparent when it comes to foreign payment fees for international customers.

If you go to Grab's Singapore Help site, you will see you pay 5% fees for foreign-issued credit/debit cards.

This is problematic for a few reasons

  1. 1. If you are from some country other than what Grab has listed in the drop-down shown below, you may be inclined to switch to International --> English as you do not think the Singapore foreign payment fees apply to you.

When you do switch to International --> English, there is no article available.

  1. 2. Prior to payment the Grab app also does not inform the user what the foreign payment fee is. Should an international user should just assume 5% foreign payment fee then?
  2. No!
  3. There is no indication of the foreign payment fee until you complete a ride and view the bill. The foreign payment fee in Vietnam is 4% as shown in the receipt below. Clicking on the info bubble shows more details in the bottom of the image.
  2. While a user should be happy it's lower than the assumed 5%, the issue is Grab being opaque. Grab is also not doing itself any favors by advertising a higher rate of 5% rather than 4% which may turn some users away, regardless of how "cheap" rides are in Vietnam compared to the US for example.
  3. I will take it one step further and say the foreign payment fee should be listed when the user is adding the payment instrument (i.e. credit card in this case). If I had known it was 4% or even 5%, I would clearly have chosen one of the e-wallets that charge 3% (e.g. AliPay) instead of a credit/debit card.
  4. 3, I can't help but feel Grab is shifting the foreign payment fee blame to Moca by listing them explicitly. Customers are interacting with Grab directly as far as they're concerned. They should not care what (fee) arrangement Grab has structured with Moca as part of their "strategic alliance".

My implementation for the high 5% fee

To reduce the foreign payment fee pain, I use the Hang Seng Travel+ card to pay for Grab in Vietnam, getting me 5% cash back, although I am still subject to a foreign transaction fee of 1.95% back home. My net is therefore a 1.95% fee instead of 5%. Some of you may not be so lucky and be hit twice with a 5% Grab fee + 2-3% foreign transaction fee from your credit card company.

Other thoughts

Once Grab has addressed the issues above, they should also think more globally. What if a user has payment instruments from multiple countries? What would be the most cost effective payment instrument choice then? How can they educate the user on what to use? e.g. a user from Singapore has both credit and debits from both Singapore and Malaysia. Or an "International" expat also a payment instrument from one of the countries listed in the drop-down.

It seems like Grab is overly local focused and forgetting to think bigger (i.e. globally) by making such design choices.