PayPal exchange rate or Mastercard/Visa exchange rate?

waqasahmed

Just wondering when you pay via PayPal,who's exchange rates do you like to use. There's the option of using PayPal's exchange rate and using whatever your card company uses, and I'm not too sure about what would (normally) be cheaper?

Thanks

waqasahmed

Just found some exchange rates for today

PayPal USD>GBP = 1.56161
Visa USD>GBP = 1.618700
Mastercard USD>GBP = 1.609399

I suppose that makes the Mastercard exchange rate better than all of them, so I suppose it might make sense for Mastercard to do the exchange rate, instead of PayPal

I suppose Visa/Mastercard track quite closely, but PayPal is way off

nomoneytoday

Sometimes your card would load the rate by 2-3%, so it's worth including that in your calculation too..

waqasahmed

nomoneytoday wrote: »

Sometimes your card would load the rate by 2-3%, so it's worth including that in your calculation too..

It was on the Aqua card, so I don't think they have a load? I suppose if I used my Capital One Mastercard, it would probably be cheaper for PayPal to do the conversion?

EDIT: Even with the Capital one fee, it still makes it cheaper than PayPal
EDIT 2: My Lloyds Credit card is just about cheaper than PayPal, and my Lloyds Debit card is marginally cheaper than PayPal, but I don't tend to use my debit card so much online, unless there are fees for credit cards etc...

So even with the 2.99% (max) load, it's still cheaper via credit card for all my (main) cards

EDIT 3: It seems that the PP exchange rate is 3.655842% worse than Visa, and 3.739218% worse than Mastercard, so I suppose most UK cards are probably going to still be cheaper than PayPal, even with the loading fee

jen245

Paypal's exchange rate is pants. I use my Clarity card for foreign transactions if Im paying by Paypal, get a pretty much perfect exchange rate every time, and no loading fees

Buzby

Their Rate is the same-ish as vendors offering home currency billing to your CC, letting your own CC do it to the MC/Visa interbank rate - it will always cost you more using this, and I avoid them as much as I possibly can!

chattychappy

Effectively its a form of DCC (dynamic currency exchange) where the merchant (Paypal in this case) use their own exchange rate and can bill a card in the cardholder's local currency (GBP here).

I am in Taiwan at the moment - a generally clean, scam free destination - and had a rather nice Japanese dinner tonight*. For the first time on this island, I was asked which I prefer to pay in - GBP or NT$. NT$ of course.

As I say, never had this before on this island. So DCC is spreading... look out for it in all its forms whether you be online or on foreign turf.

(* just showing off I know. But around £15 for an eat-as-much-as you like buffet. Sushi, sashimi, tempura, hotpot, octopus, crab, prawns etc. Includes beer on tap, coffee and ice cream. An ex-Japanese colony - and about the only bit of the far East that doesn't hate the Japanese, it has the best Japanese food outside of Japan. Really cheap and great quality. If you like Japanese food and want to "money save", come here!)

waqasahmed

Thanks for the replies. I bought something for $1.67 from eBay, and according to PayPal, it would cost £1.07 with their conversion rate and it cost £1.03 with the Aqua card. It's not on my statement yet, but my balance went down by £1.03

Not much difference, but the difference will obviously be larger with bigger numbers and of course I pay about 3.88% less than I would if I let PayPal do the conversion

And of course, I also get the 3% cashback as well