It's already rough enough for a lot of our international readers who will read about an app only to find it's not listed in their localized Marketplace. Or even worse, they don't have a Marketplace of to call their own (hi Sweden!). In Australia they do have their own Marketplace but as Long Zheng reports, there's a 101% transaction fee on top of every app purchase with a credit card.
This has to do with where the transactions are processed (Singapore) and that whole international banking situation. Australians are encouraged to use carrier billing as an alternative until, hopefully, Microsoft fixes the situation. Long Zheng is quick to point out he doesn't think Microsoft is doing this on purpose (and they don't seem to benefit from it) but nonetheless, it's just bad when a $0.99 app costs you $1.99.
Source: iStartedSomething
