forex dollar rates

andydiysaver

HI
wonder if anyone either gets paid in dollars or runs businesses in dollars - I do a bit of both and I am rapidly realising paypal is NOT the way to do this - the X rate on dollars to sterling is pretty poor even with the current value cause of the dips


can anyone recommend an alternative to paypal for the conversion of USD to sterling - surely there are some finance houses in the UK wanting to trade with the USA?


note I cannot take the leave high account balance option to avoid fees, I'm more looking at best forex deals USD>GBP for percentage


thanks in advance

TheTracker

Do you have a US$ account or are you having the forex at point of sale?

andydiysaver

haven't got a dollar account, I freelance in IT solutions so have dollars paid to me (by international clients) at moment via paypal which I then have to take the X rate hit paypal gives to get into sterling - and I also have a dollar based forex trading account I do quite well on which I'd like to draw down on into sterling without involving paypal - everything's paypal at moment, wondering if there are cheaper alternatives out there


cheers

TheTracker

andydiysaver wrote: »

haven't got a dollar account, I freelance in IT solutions so have dollars paid to me (by international clients) at moment via paypal which I then have to take the X rate hit paypal gives to get into sterling - and I also have a dollar based forex trading account I do quite well on which I'd like to draw down on into sterling without involving paypal - everything's paypal at moment, wondering if there are cheaper alternatives out there

Not much alternative.

For merchants with higher transactions Stripe is the hottest thing. You'll take 2.4% hit on the credit card and 2% on the forex. It doesn't sound like this works with your business model?

You could open a USD account with a UK bank. You can either have the money wired, or accept USD cheques. Both have issues depending on the value of sale. If you don't invoice larger amounts, it would be more expensive to you, and your business model may require the money up front or soon after work.

You could charge the clients in GBP and make it their problem. Which might work for larger clients only.

You could also wait until bitcoin and the like become less volatile, and currency transfer will cost absolute pennies.

airmark

You can use CurrencyFair which will allow you to convert among currencies at levels very close to the interbank rate (less than 0.3%, and in some cases as little as 0% because you can place limit orders that can get filled against other people with currencyfair only charging a small fee).
However, for this you need bank accounts on either end of the FX transfer, so you need a USD bank account. If you manage to open a US bank account, then you can link it with paypal and with CurrencyFair, so you can transfer electronically from paypal -> US bank -> currencyfair -> convert from USD to GBP -> UK bank. It may be difficult to open a US bank account without a permanent US address though, but give it a shot. Alternatively see if there's another way to transfer USD from paypal to transferwise (either directly or via a USD account in the UK).

haycorns

Open a US dollars account and a GBP account with citibank you can then transfer currency online and see the rate before you do it. For bigger transfers you might want to use HIFX or similar