Tag Archives for visa.
Last week Spanish social media influencer Mery Caldass uploaded a video from an airport, crying as she shared that her travel plans to Puerto Rico had fallen apart: “I asked ChatGPT if I needed a visa, and it told me no.”
The Big Beautiful Bill has more and more warts that just keep coming out, including a new $250 “Visa Integrity Fee” for most foreigners applying for U.S. nonimmigrant visas. It’s a ‘refundable deposit’ that you’re supposed to get back for leaving the U.S. on time, though no one knows yet how refunds will actually happen. Implementing a cross-agency refund system is going to take… time. The fee amount will adjust up with inflation.
Five Air India flight attendants were jailed at Zurich airport after arriving without the mandatory Crew Member Certificate.
Over the past week, two separate Air India flights brought in crewmembers – and across the two, five flight flight attendants were affected – four arrived without any CMC while the fifth carried an invalid version of the document, issued under Air Vistara
A Vietnamese woman stripped naked at Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 in Manila on Saturday after a dispute with immigration officers over a visa fine.
Visa and Mastercard have entered into a $30 billion anti-trust settlement with retailers over card interchange fees. Readers are asking, as one put it, “Is this the end of credit card rewards?”
A Filipino woman applied for a Schengen Visa to visit Italy. This European visa was denied, because authorities weren’t convinced she would leave the country before her visa expired.
She reapplied for her visa, and this time included an e-mail confirmation of future-dated tickets to go see Taylor Swift in Singapore.
Brazil has said that U.S. tourists will have to obtain a visa starting October 1, since the U.S. continues to require Brazilians to obtain a visa. The country scrapped the requirement in 2019 but it’s being re-imposed as a reciprocity measure.
Foreign visits to the U.S. are down substantially compared to pre-pandemic times. That’s bad for airlines. It’s bad for hotels. But it’s bad for the entire U.S. economy, too. And it’s an own-goal, with the U.S. government slow-walking people who want to visit here from around the world.
Visa is adjusting merchant swipe fees across the board for the first time in a decade. The fees grocers charge will go down. Rates will also be lower for health-care, education and real estate, areas where Visa would like to win market share away from checks. Meanwhile the fee for online (‘card not present’) transactions will go up.
Banks want to bonus small dollar, frequent spend like groceries to get customers in the habit of using their cards, keeping them top of wallet for unbonused spend. The categories where this makes sense to banks though will change based on the revenue associated with each type of transaction.
Back in December there was a first-ever 100,000 point signup bonus offer for the Radisson Rewards Visa.
Now though there’s a 120,000 point offer after $3000 spend within 90 days.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
