Since 2 years ago I am facing an ugly issue that is costing to my company thousands of $$/€€/££.
The Problem
At OpenClassifieds LTD we sell digital goods everywhere in the world. We decided to price in USD $ since seems the most international currency and the most used for this kind of payments.
We are established on UK, so we need to exchange to GBP £ and I and other of my employees get paid in € EUR…
So at the end: We receive in $ to £ to €, with all the commissions you can inmagine.
The Scam
Each provider benefits unfairly a lot from currency exchange, this are the ones I have:
Barclays: 4’5£ per transaction if its in GBP + % depending on currency, never used it, but you can see here: http://www.barclays.co.uk/Travel/Buyforeigncurrency/P1242557963546
Paypal: Besides their commission on the transaction, they use their own currency exchange when they send you the money, example:
Conversion from: $11,679.55 USD
Conversion to: £7,237.84 GBP
Exchange rate: 1 US Dollar = 0.6197 British Pounds
Real exchange rate from xe.com
Conversion from: $11,679.55 USD
Conversion to: £7,456.78 GBP
Exchange rate: 1 US Dollar = 0.6388 British Pounds
Difference = £ 218.94 GBP (benefits for Paypal) , %2,936 from the total.
They claim that not any commission is charged, but obviously they make a lot of money from this transactions.
Stripe: %2 percent from USD to GBP.
Solutions
Accept payments with Bitcoin/cryptocurrency, but at some point I need to exchange it to a currency I can actually use at home. Perfect scenario will be to use only a global currency everywhere…without fees to pay etc…
But for now when I need to transfer between different currencies and countries the best I’ve found so far is TransferWise to send money abroad. Really easy and a lot cheaper than the bank! Sign up now and get your first transfer up to £3000 for free. https://transferwise.com/u/2dc0 (if 3 of you sign up I get £100 xD)
The Exchange shops (Like in the picture)
Obviously this are the worst, they claim no commission! but really is a great scam…when you travel just go to an ATM and withdraw local currency, sure your bank will do better exchange than this places.
As last comment, something happened to me in last holidays coming home from Dominican Republic.
When leaving the country we needed to pay $40 USD (yes in USD) to leave, we were unaware and we didn’t carry any USD. They pointed us to this great exchange shop… To withdraw $40 from my card they charged us 44€, YES EURO ($55 so $15 commission obviously).
No commissions they say! FUCKERS! and we didn’t have any other alternative…Lesson learned.