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Shoutout to the guy at Panera who showed me how to bypass PayPal's currency conversion
I was sitting next to this guy at Panera last Tuesday and he saw me grumbling at my phone about a $4.75 fee on a $50 payment from a UK client. He leaned over and said 'just set your PayPal primary currency to GBP and let your bank do the conversion instead.' I tried it on my next $120 payment and the fee dropped to like $1.20 lol. Has anyone else noticed how much PayPal jacks up their exchange rate compared to what your bank gives you?
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karenc202mo ago
In my experience that depends a lot on your bank and what kind of account you have. My credit union gives me a rate that's pretty close to the mid-market rate, so when I switched my PayPal to GBP it saved me about 2% on every international payment. I have a friend who uses a big national bank and their conversion fee is actually worse than PayPal's, so it really varies. The trick is to check your bank's fee schedule for foreign transactions because some of them tack on an extra 3% on top of their rate. PayPal's fee is hidden in the exchange rate markup, which for me was usually around 3.5-4% depending on the day. Just saying, it's worth running the numbers with your own bank before you assume one is always cheaper.
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dakota_miller932mo ago
Isnt PayPal's fee actually cheaper than what a bank charges?
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hunt.hayden2mo ago
You said "PayPal's fee is hidden in the exchange rate markup," but banks do the same thing with their own rates. How do you actually compare the two when neither one is transparent about the real markup they're taking? What's the best way to get a straight answer from either of them before you send money?
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