Technology has resulted in massive margin compression among industry after industry. Retailers have to struggle to make money to pay their brick and mortar overhead while consumers routinely see and touch the merchandise in their store while buying it online simultaneously. A coworker in fact detailed how he saved $30 on an iPad case buy using eBay on a computer from the Apple store he was in.

But the retail story isn’t a new one – we wrote stories at TMC in the nineties about the death of brick and mortar and certainly the loss of Circuit City was in-part caused by competition not only from WalMart and Costco but Amazon.

But now this margin compression is coming to currency exchange kiosks courtesy of the Currency Exchange Fee Calculator iPhone app which allows travelers to determine how much money exchange company is making on the transaction.

The challenge of course is your recourse is limited. It isn’t like you can shop online for an alternative. Perhaps however armed with additional information you may be able to negotiate a better rate. The program works optimally with an internet connection but if one is not available the software uses the rates it has stored in its database from the last time you used it.

More information is available at TheNextWeb.