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Or do you mean a charge levied by your bank (eg item costs $50, you sign a slip for $50, your credit card bill shows $50 and a further $1 charge)?
If it's the latter, credit card issuers all over the world have pretty much always done this for foreign currency transactions. There's a limited number of card issuers that don't make an FX charge of this kind. In the UK, recent legislation has required card companies to split out this charge, so it's more visible now than it used to be - but it was always there (and the bill would always have said $51). One disadvantage of this new-fangled transparency is that I used to earn frequent flyer miles on the $51 total, but now only earn them on the $50 purchase price.
One of the further issues in places like the Caribbean is that many shops will display prices in USD, which you can pay if you use cash. But if you use a credit card, the transaction will go through in local currency, and it's then converted back into USD by your card issuer (assuming that's your home currency) - which is why you can end up with a different USD total plus an FX charge, even though in your own mind the transaction was always in USD.
There are still plenty of good reasons for using credit cards when overseas, but as you say this sort of thing is always worth thinking about.
[ 01-25-2015: Message edited by: Globaliser ]
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