How do I change the currency for purchase?

[123drbruce]

When buying from a seller in another country, I want to buy in the currency of the seller.

How can I change ebay / Paypal to NOT convert to my currency?

[kopenhagen5]

You can't. You purchase in the currency shown.

Conversion is done at checkout either in eBay if paying other than PayPal or PayPal.

If you are not happy with the conversion rate, see if the seller accepts Scrill but PayPal's rate is usually better than many.

[*tippy*toes*]

As your PayPal funds would be in AUD, I don't think there's much you can do about them converting it when you go to make a payment. I think there is somewhere in PayPal where you can change AUD over to USD, but it's been awhile since I checked. I do know that if you manually send money, you can send it as USD. Last year I wanted to send a friend $50USD and wasn't sure how much that was in AUD. I noticed there was a dropdown where you could select the currency you wanted to send. It still showed as AUD in my PayPal transaction list though.

[kopenhagen5]

That's right tippy, you can send funds in any currency using PayPal's conversion unless you have a balance in US and send US$'s, but when making a purchase in eBay you are stuck with their conversion rates.

[phorum_junkie*]

Living in two countries I often have to transfer money between the UK and Aus plus I fairly often buy from US sites (not ebay) and the Paypal transaction nearly always works out better then using my banks to do the exchange even though I have a UK bank that does not charge any fees.

[123drbruce]

Thanks, however, for me the ebay conversion is outragiously expensive.

My credit card providor uses the Mastercard conversion rate WITHOUT A CONVERSION FEE (as most banks do).

A US$55 purchase using ebay will cost me about A$4 more than what my credit card provider charges.

Cheers

[123drbruce]

Skrill also converts payment to buyer's currency (eg. if I buy from US, it'll be charged in A$).

Is there any online payment option that allows user to pay in any selected currency?

[phorum_junkie*]

My credit card providor uses the Mastercard conversion rate WITHOUT A CONVERSION FEE (as most banks do).

That is not what most banks do and their exchange rate is rarely better than Paypal's. The ebay conversion price you see in the listing is just an estimate and rarely works out the same as that from the bank or Paypal.

It has been a while since I paid for an ebay purchase in another currency however there always used to be an option to let your bank do the conversion, of course you have to have a zero balance in your Paypal account so it uses your card rather than the existing balance.

[lyndal1838]

Most banks charge the fee separately to the actual conversion whereas paypal builds the fee into the rate.

If you add the 2 amounts charged by the bank it is usually more than the paypa rate.

Also, with paypal there is no lag between the being given the rate and your card being charged.  When you use your credit card there is often a 3 day lag between making the payment and the card being debited where the rate can change.

[123drbruce]

"...My credit card providor uses the Mastercard conversion rate WITHOUT A CONVERSION FEE (as most banks do).

That is not what most banks do and their exchange rate is rarely better than Paypal'"

I'm in Australia, and there is typically a double whammy - the credit card provider (Mastercard or Visa) tack on a percentage charge at the time of conversion (this goes to the bank, not Mastercard or Visa) AND the banks typically impose another 'currency conversion charge' (typically a flat fee).

Both the Mastercard and Visa daily conversion 'rate' is posted online.  The rate is typically close to the daily mid-market rate.  Mastercard tends to be closer than Visa (by about 0.005%).  If you look at their websites, you can use their daily rate to see what they measure' versus what your bank charges.

As far as I can tell ebay are charging about a 6% conversion fee (between US$ and A$).

If I use my credit card, I'll get the Mastercard rate for the day of the transaction.

Hence, I'd like to pay in US$ for purchases from those selling in US$.

Cheers