APR, zeroing, DCC: the 10 words of Belgian card fees

On the Beobank Visa Classic page, the representative example carries two numbers half a point apart: 14.49 % APR, 13.98 % borrowing rate. The gap fits on one line, the 5 euro annual fee. The ten words below all read the same way, by looking for where the difference goes.

Half a point between the APR and the borrowing rate, and that is the annual fee

Every Belgian card offer carrying a credit reserve shows an APR, a borrowing rate and an annual fee. The three do not measure the same thing, and only one is comparable from one issuer to the next.

TAEG (annual percentage rate)

The TAEG, the Belgian annual percentage rate of charge, expresses on a yearly basis the equivalence between everything the lender advances and everything the consumer repays, interest and compulsory charges included.

Its calculation method is set by law, which makes it the only genuinely comparable indicator between two offers. The Beobank Visa Classic product page shows 14.49 % on an open-ended credit facility of 2,150 euros, with the note "rates in force at 09/05/2025"; I read it exactly as it stood on 27 August 2026, sixteen months later. The statutory ceiling, by contrast, moves twice a year. It dropped by 1.5 percentage points on 1 June 2025 for credit facilities, cards with staggered repayment included, according to the FPS Economy release of 28 May 2025. The rates Belgian issuers actually charge are in our guide to credit card interest rates.

Taux débiteur (borrowing rate)

The borrowing rate is the purely financial part of the APR: the percentage applied to capital you have not repaid, with no charges attached.

At Beobank it stands at 13.98 %, actuarial and variable. The 0.51 of a point separating it from the APR is the 5 euro annual fee, folded back into the calculation because the law requires it. The word variable has an immediate consequence: Article VII.94, § 3 of the Code of Economic Law obliges the lender to pass on any reduction of the statutory ceiling without delay to live contracts whose rate can move. An increase depends on what the contract provides, and a fixed-rate contract keeps its signed rate even if the authorised maximum falls below it. The wider mechanism is set out in our guide to how credit cards work in Belgium.

Cotisation annuelle (annual fee)

The annual fee pays for holding the card, whether or not you use it.

Five euros a year at Beobank. Zero at Revolut on the Standard plan. 17.99 euros a month on Metal, so 215.88 euros over the year, per the Revolut personal fees applicable since 9 July 2026. Between the first and the last, the ratio is forty-three to one. It is the most visible line on a card, and rarely the heaviest. Annual fees issuer by issuer sit in our comparison tool, the economics of a no-fee card are taken apart in our guide to the free credit card, and the full yearly tally line by line in our guide to hidden fees.

Settling the statement in one go triggers no interest at all

Période de grâce (grace period)

The grace period is the interval between a purchase and the statement due date, during which no interest is owed provided the balance is settled in full.

Belgian law does not name it; it comes from the contract. Its length therefore depends on the statement closing date, and the spread is wide: a purchase made the day after closing enjoys almost two months, the same purchase made the day before only a handful of days. Beobank states plainly that you may repay your full monthly spending. Cash withdrawals are almost always excluded and bear interest from day one, which is why a cardholder who settles everything still sees interest appear after a holiday withdrawal; our guide to the no-fee card abroad and our guide to credit card repayment cover those two cases.

How long may a card stay drawn?

Remboursement minimum (minimum repayment)

The minimum repayment is the share of the drawn balance the contract requires you to pay each month to stay compliant.

The Visa Classic clause is precise: one eighteenth of the reserve used where the credit line does not exceed 5,000 euros, one twentieth above that, with a floor of 25 euros, excluding the annual fee, then increased by that fee. A share of the balance used, so recalculated each month on capital that shrinks. I ran the arithmetic: at one eighteenth a month, (17/18) to the power of 12 remains, that is 50.4 % of the drawn amount after twelve payments. On the 2,150 euros of the example, that leaves 1,083 euros still owed after a year of regular payments, and the 25 euro floor never bites on that path since the instalment falls from 119 to 60 euros over the period. The minimum keeps the contract compliant, it clears nothing. If the monthly payments become hard to meet, an accredited debt mediation service or your commune's public social welfare centre (CPAS or OCMW) are the people to contact. Our guide to the credit limit explains how the ceiling interacts with this calculation.

Délai de zérotage (zeroing period)

The zeroing period is the maximum length of time a credit facility may stay drawn before its balance must return to zero.

Twelve months at most where the credit amount does not exceed 3,000 euros, sixty months above that, the clock starting within two months of the first drawdown: these are the durations published by the FPS Economy, checked on 27 August 2026. The obligation weighs on the lender as much as on the cardholder, and a breach ends in a report to the Central Individual Credit Register, explained in our guide to registration at the CCP.

Now put the two clocks side by side. The 2,150 euro credit facility in the Beobank example falls below the 3,000 euro mark, so under the twelve-month zeroing period. The minimum repayment set out in the same contract leaves half the capital in place at the end of those twelve months. Both clauses appear on the same product page and do not lead to the same place.

I stop there for want of a source. No public document from the issuer explains how it reconciles the two deadlines, whether it raises the monthly instalment automatically, blocks the card, or warns the holder first. The question applies to any Belgian contract with a fractional minimum repayment, not only to that one, and it belongs with the adviser before signing rather than with customer service afterwards.

Two points worth knowing when reading a zeroing clause. The clock does not run on the calendar year: it starts at the first drawdown, stops the day the balance returns to zero, then restarts at the next drawdown. And the amount that decides the bracket is the credit granted, not the amount you have drawn, so a line opened at 3,500 euros on which you have only ever spent 400 euros falls under the sixty months, not the twelve. The vocabulary of the contract carrying these clauses, from the credit facility to the spending limit, is covered in our first instalment, the glossary of basics.

Why does the same purchase cost 1 % more on a Saturday?

Commission de change (currency exchange fee)

The currency exchange fee is the margin your issuer adds to the interbank rate when a transaction is not denominated in the account currency.

Revolut carves it into allowances. The Standard plan gives 1,000 euros of exchange per rolling month at no charge, beyond which a 1 % fair usage fee applies. A calendar rule sits on top: between Friday 5 p.m. and Sunday 6 p.m. New York time, exchange costs 1 % on every plan, allowance used up or not. A dinner paid in pounds sterling on a Saturday evening therefore costs more than the same dinner on a Tuesday, and nothing at the terminal says so. Our guide to paying abroad covers the margins Belgian issuers apply.

My arithmetic on the Metal plan gives a high break-even point. At 215.88 euros a year to remove a free allowance of 12,000 euros and a 1 % rate, you have to exchange more than 33,500 euros a year for the subscription to pay for itself on exchange alone. Below that threshold, what you are mostly buying is travel insurance and airport lounges, and both deserve to be compared on their own terms.

DCC

DCC, for dynamic currency conversion, is the option by which a foreign terminal converts the amount into your card's currency itself.

The screen offers to charge you in euros and the wording sounds reassuring. The rate applied is then the merchant's provider's rate, not your issuer's. Regulation (EU) 2019/518 settled the transparency side: card-based currency conversion charges must be expressed as a percentage mark-up over the latest available euro reference rate published by the European Central Bank, and that mark-up must be disclosed to you before you confirm. The figure is therefore readable on screen, provided you look for it. Declining conversion and paying in local currency remains possible everywhere.

Frais de retrait (cash withdrawal fee)

Cash withdrawal fees pay for dispensing notes at an ATM, independently of any currency conversion.

Revolut lets through five withdrawals or 200 euros per rolling month, whichever comes first, then charges 2 % with a minimum of 1 euro per withdrawal. The floor changes everything on small amounts. A 40 euro withdrawal beyond the allowance costs 1 euro, so 2.5 % rather than 2 %. Our guide to cash withdrawals on a credit card compares Belgian issuers' schedules.

A card costing 5 euros a year still earns its issuer money

Interchange

Interchange is the commission the merchant's bank pays over to the card issuer on every payment collected.

Regulation (EU) 2015/751 caps it at 0.2 % of the amount for a debit transaction and 0.3 % for a credit transaction, on consumer cards. You never see it: it is taken from the merchant's takings, upstream of the price you are shown.

The APR is built to aggregate the cost of credit. These items do not enter it:

• the exchange fee on a transaction denominated in a foreign currency;
• the mark-up applied by a foreign terminal through DCC;
• ATM withdrawal fees;
• replacing a lost card, charged at 6 euros by Revolut;
• the management fee taken from a residual balance after account closure, 2.30 euros a month at the same issuer.

Last verification of all these amounts: 27 August 2026. Two of them carry an effective date more than a year old, and it is the issuer itself that says so on its product page.