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Look how much Paypal puts the screw to you on currency conversion

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#5 ·
FrontRangeFriend said:
If your credit card doesn’t have foreign currency fees just pay for the item in the other currency and let your credit card do the exchange, you’ll usually get market rate.
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Even if it does, it's probably still cheaper than Paypal.
Card with not foreign transaction fee is best IME, but only if you make sure the payment is done in foreign currency and is not converted by the payment service to the currency of your card.
 
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#10 ·
Yup. I figured that out a couple of years ago when I was buying parts overseas. Paypal sucked me into that on the first couple of purchases. Like others have said, just select the option to pay in foreign currency. Then I got an extra credit card that has no foreign transaction fees just so I could order bike parts :p
 
#11 ·
Paypal has always been a scam. Is it convenient? Yes. Do I use it occasionally? Yes.

Get a credit card with no international transaction fees. We have one and when we were in Asia in March the CC had far better money exchange rates than what we got while changing cash at the money changers, and there were no international processing fees. We shopped around for the best money changer rates before changing money, and the CC rates ended up being pretty close to the published rates on the internet, while the money changer rates were all dependent on how the money changers felt and the amount of cash we were exchanging. We exchanged US$5000 in cash and the credit card exchange rate was still quite a bit better even on US$4 CC transactions.
 
#15 ·
Try taking foreign currency via pp, you get f'ed on the exchange rate and f'ed again with higher fees. I get they need to make money but it ends up being 6+%, which is more than double the fees I get charged for US buyers.

For purchases, I use a CC and just pay a small foreign transaction fee.

I often take pp for foreign purchases, it's hard to avoid as sellers like seller protection and I can't blame them, but direct bank transfer is most economical, using a service I've found Wise often has the best rates.
 
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