If the answer is yes look at this short guide that could save you some dimes or bucks in each Paypal transaction.
First of all, when you start Paypal transaction process it will offer you to chose funding options. It should look something like this picture.
It is possible to see that conversion is already suggested, and by default, Paypal would do it.
The fact is that this is the worst option for you since their charges for conversion are sky-high. To change this setting you need to do some clicking. It is nicely complicated since Paypal does not want you to change it and yet must allow you the freedom to do it.
How to stop wasting money to Paypal
Like marked on the picture above, there is a tiny link that says “change” when you start the payment process. That is your starting point. After clicking that link you will get another confusing option like on the picture below. Actually, there is no option marked for the change of conversion provider. You need to click on the link that actually shows the exchange rate.
After that, the magic option will appear and you will have the chance to change how will you do the conversion.
It is obvious that by default “Convert with Paypal” is selected. And please take a note that it would cost 5,19 BAM this way.
Now we are going to select “Convert with card issuer” option. At final something like this will appear showing your final step. It will not show you converted amount since conversion is not done by the Paypal.
Here is an SMS statement from the bank that says that transaction was made and it was 4.94 BAM.
Final result
It means that in this example it is 0.25 BAM less than it would be by default. It is roughly 5 % and Paypal would take it just because it is the default option and many people don’t know how to change it. I spoke with people that use the Paypal daily and even they did not figure it out. So next time when you make payment thru this service and your country currency is different than the one you are paying in to, take few seconds to change currency converter in order to avoid wasting money.
Another thing to avoid
If you have any pre-approved payments in Paypal, know the same thing applies to them also. In this case, there is no option to avoid currency conversion fees. For example, I removed pre-approved payment for Netflix in my account, and now I`m paying for it by credit card directly. On 10 Euro transaction fee was around 30-40 Cents. It`s not a big deal, but I don`t like being robbed, even for few cents. They are processing millions of transactions daily, so do the math.
There are some interesting statistics on this link.
At the end don`t get me wrong, Paypal is a great service, and I`m not saying that you should avoid using it. This is just a tip to use it wisely.
Just a short update, not a two weeks after publishing this article, Paypal changed its default policy, and from now you are able to set conversion provider other than Paypal as a default. There are some more good changes, but this is the most important one. Thank you for listening Paypal!
Once again, thank you for reading.
