Issuing PayPal refund in U.S. Currency?

[letscleanupmycupboards]

I'm refunding a buyer from overseas who paid with PayPal in $us and wanted an item posted to a country with a predisposition to fraud. PayPal told me in not so many words that the transaction was funded with a credit card so a chargeback would be the concern (and as such they are eligible for buyer protection but I'm not covered for seller protection, a risk I won't take). Thankfully I looked into it before posting. 

If if ive already withdrawn the funds from PayPal and need to refund it, will the exact $au amount I withdrew be taken as a refund or will it depend on the exchange rate, which is different going the other way? As it is a refund it would be unfair for it to cost me more money, or do I just watch the $ rate and refund at the right time? How does it work. 

[digital*ghost]

If a transaction is refunded within a certain amount of time, the payment is simply reversed (i.e. the exchange rate on the day of payment is used, so the same amount of money that came in goes back out). I'm not sure what the period is - payments can be refunded up to 60 days later, but the same exchange rate isn't used the whole time, maybe only for the first 30 days (to hazard a guess) and beyond that, the exchange rate on the day of the refund is used, so sometimes it can cost you a little more, other times a little less.

I'm not sure how it works if you received USD and then tranferred it to an AUD balance before withdrawing, though. (Sorry, wasn't sure which if the two sceanrios applied). 

The buyer using a credit card doesn't automatically mean you aren't eligible for seller protection - the only way a buyer using a card can mean that is if they used PayPal as a guest (you can check whether they did that on the transaction history, if you look at the full details it should tell you whether the payment came from an unregistered buyer - that also means the buyer is not eligible for buyer protection, but it's true it leaves you vulnerable to a chargeback). 

[lyndal1838]

Digi, the reversal of the transaction at the same exchange rate used to apply for 7 days but in view of the new times for disputes it could have changed recently.

Also, if the buyer used paypal as a guest they can still get paypal protection for a dispute by opening an account with the same credit card and personal details as they used for the guest transaction.  The transaction appears in the account and they then use the Resolution Centre as usual.  If the paypal dispute fails they can then fall back on their credit card protection.

[digital*ghost]

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

Also, if the buyer used paypal as a guest they can still get paypal protection for a dispute by opening an account with the same credit card and personal details as they used for the guest transaction.  The transaction appears in the account and they then use the Resolution Centre as usual.  If the paypal dispute fails they can then fall back on their credit card protection.

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That used to be the case, but PayPal changed that when they ended Seller Protection for guest payments.

As it stands now, there is no buyer or seller protection via PayPal when the payment is made using guest checkouts (or more specifically, the buyer has to log into their account in order to pay, if they want PayPal protection). From memory this was announced a bit before PayPal changed the standard fees from 2.4% to 2.6%, as I remember being a little surprised the fee change was more outrageous to people than the withdrawl of seller protection for these specific circumstances, all things considered. 

I had a quick look at the PP user agreement to double-check the exchange rate issue, and now they don't actually mention anything about the original vs current exchange rates when a refund is issued, it just says (and this is related to sending funds, I couldn't find anything more under receivig funds) :

"When you send a payment in which you perform a currency conversion using PayPal (i.e. converting the currency in which you fund your payment into the currency to be received by the recipient) and later there is a refund, return or Reversal, we will generally reverse the currency conversion and complete the refund, return or Reversal in your funding currency using the exchange rate which prevailed on the date of the original transaction."