Just had our statement in and it seems that the Nationwide are going to start charging for credit card and debit card use whilst on holiday outside Europe

This is the official statement:

When you use a Nationwide Visa debit card or credit card to make a transaction in certain currencies other than sterling, Visa charge a fee for each transaction and Nationwide currently pays that fee on your behalf.

We will start to pass this fee onto you from 6 May 2009 on credit card and from 1 June 2009 on debit card and it will be included in the sterling amount shown on your statement.

The fee is currently 0.84%. From 1 July 2009 this fee will increase to 1%.

The fee does not apply to sterling transactions. It is only payable on transactions in currencies outside the Visa Europe region. For details of the countries affected please see Nationwide - Foreign Transactions.

The fees we are passing on are those that we incur on your behalf - your Nationwide credit card or debit card still has no commission charges for transactions that you carry out.