Using Paypal to spread savings over a few different currencies

robindix

I'm going to work in Japan in 3 months time and looking at the currency charts the pound has been sliding for the last 8 months or so against the Yen and doing badly against the Euro. So I was thinking it may be worth converting some £ to Yen now or even to Yen and Euro if it was easy enough.

I wouldn't really go to the trouble of opening an offshore bank account (I don't have that much money) but it looks like you can use Paypal to switch between currencies pretty easily and also to transfer between bank accounts when I open one in Japan.

Does anyone have any experience of using paypal in this way?

Jonbvn

Paypal charges are generally far too high and would render would you propose untenable.

caliston

I don't have any direct experience, but when I've been buying things in dollars recently the Paypal rate has been about £1=$1.94, while the mid-market rate is about £1=$1.99. So that's losing about 2.5%. Meanwhile Travelex Online is giving me £1=$1.9571. So you won't save anything by using Paypal, though it may be more convenient than a big pile of notes.

Travelex offer a Cash Passport (ATM card you can load with currency and then use to withdraw) but it's Euro/Dollar/Sterling only. Maybe another FX bureau does something similar in Yen?