Stop bleeding 3.5% on every USD SaaS bill
Indian founders typically lose ₹15K-50K / year on forex markup paying for HubSpot, Notion, Linear, Vercel, Slack, GitHub. The right card recovers most of it. Plug your monthly USD spend in below.
Your USD-billed SaaS spend
HubSpot, Notion, Linear, Vercel, Slack, GitHub, Figma — anything billed in USD by a US company.
Markup numbers are published by issuers. Cross-border conversion fees (1–1.5% on top, varies by bank) are not included here — those add to whatever you see below.
Lowest-cost cards for your USD spend
FX fee + annual fee combined. Lower = less of your dollar wasted.
Capital One Savor
Bank of America Travel Rewards
Capital One Quicksilver
Apple Card
Wells Fargo Autograph
Tied results favored higher reward rates. Numbers exclude welcome bonuses (which only apply year 1) and ignore the 1-1.5% cross-border fee, which is the same across cards.
The math, in one paragraph
Every USD SaaS bill goes through four toll-booths: (1) interbank conversion rate — the floor; (2) forex markup (this calculator) — typically 3.5% retail, 2% premium, 0% on US cards; (3) cross-border fee — flat 1-1.5% from your bank; (4) GST under reverse charge — 18%, but creditable for GST-registered businesses. We handle (2) above. (1), (3) and (4) are roughly the same across cards.
FAQ
›What is forex markup, exactly?
When your INR card pays a USD merchant, the issuing bank converts at a rate slightly worse than the interbank rate. The gap is the forex markup — typically 3.5% on retail cards, 2% on premium cards, and 0% on most US-issued cards. On $1,000/month of SaaS, the difference between 3.5% and 2% is ~$180/year (₹15,000+).
›Are forex markup and cross-border fee the same thing?
No — they stack. Forex markup is built into the conversion rate. The cross-border fee is a separate ~1-1.5% line-item charge from the issuing bank for processing an international transaction. We exclude the cross-border fee from the calculator because it's roughly the same across most cards (so it doesn't change the ranking) — but it adds 1-1.5% on top of whatever you see below.
›Can I pay my USD SaaS bills via wire transfer instead?
For ≥$2K/month of USD spend, business wire transfers via your business bank account run on flat-fee economics (~$15-30 per wire) plus a much narrower FX spread (often 1-2% all-in). For smaller amounts, the credit-card path is operationally simpler. We cover the math in the FX cost guide linked below.
›Why are US cards showing 0% markup?
US-issued credit cards typically have no foreign transaction fee at all — that includes Chase Sapphire Preferred, Capital One Venture, Amex Gold, and Bank of America Travel Rewards. If you have a US business and a US bank account, this is unbeatable. The catch: you need a US tax ID, US address, and US credit history — which not every founder has.
Track your SaaS, pick the right card
Add your USD subscriptions to the free MatchYourSaaS tracker — we show you the exact forex savings of each card on your specific stack, every renewal.