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@kopenhagen5 wrote:

 

The way I read it is, PayPal already have a fee charged for foreign currency transactions but this appears to be an additional fee. Even though selling only to Australia in same currency but if the buyer's account happens to stem from O.S. (which is not obvious when delivery addy shows Aus and all International members blocked) there is an extra fee.

 

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If the buyer's account is registered in another country, it is likely their primary funds / balance etc are in another currency and that a currency conversion took place. You can add additional currencies (my account is currently set up to accept / keep AUD and USD, but I could add GBP etc if I wanted to). 

I think perhaps the greater issue is that there's really not anything to indicate to a seller in these kinds of cases, the origin and currency of the payment in order to clarify the higher fees, because they don't break down the fees and just show the total cost, which is what contributes to people being unaware of additional costs, unfortunately. 

Most sellers probably wouldn't consider whether or not a foreign buyer can still purchase and pay and therefore incur these additional fees, either, at least not when they only post exclusively to Aus, and as far as I'm aware, you can't block payments from a buyer based on their PayPal currency or country of registration (at least, not on eBay, it might be possible in the settings that can be applied on independent websites), so I understand that it tends not to be the kind of information that's sought out or paid much mind to, further contributing to the surprise.

But, the info is there, still. Looking at PayPal's PDS, all cross-border transactions are supposed to incur an additional 1% rate, regardless of the base rate that's applied (i.e. no different for merchant rates etc), so that would be 3.6% instead of 2.6% on a standard transaction, and then if the payment is funded by a non-Australian credit card, a further 1%, so the total percentage can actually be 4.6%

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/cfsgpds-full?country.x=AU#18_Fees_and_charges

(the info I'm referring to is about half-way down the very long page).