Receiving money from Chinese PayPal account.

[pol2]

I am awaiting to be transfered some money by a friend in China. The last time she transfered money (approx. £300) I was charged a fee of (approx.) £16. I have been reading up on PayPal fees and currency conversion charges and it is still unclear to me exactly how the fee is calculated. 

The online calculators have been no help as they tend to only calculate the basic 3.4% + 20p charge and nothing else. 

Can somebody please help me calculate (and preferably explain how) the fee that will be charged if my friend (in China) sends me (n the UK) £500. It's really important that she knows this before sending the money as she has offered to pay the fee but it'd be gread to know what the fee will be prior to the transfer so she can simply add it on top. 

Also how much money will she need to send in order for me to receive £500?

This is information feels like it should be easier to access and PayPal should offer their own fee calculators. It is very strange that this service is not there.

Thank you for your help!

[PayPal_david]

Hi there Pol2.

Welcome to the Community!

Thanks for reaching out to us regarding your question about PayPal fees upon receiving payments.

If you are receiving a payment from someone within the UK, you would be charged 3.4% + £0.20 GBP per transaction.

If you are receiving a payment from a different country outside the UK, you will be charged the initial payment fee as above, as well as a cross border fee. A cross border fee for receiving a payment from China is 0.5%; so in total, you would pay 3.9% + Fixed Fee (£0.20 GBP) for this transaction. More information on this here

In addition to this, if you are receiving a payment in a different currency, you may be subject to a currency conversion fee. The currency conversion fee is included in the 0.5% cross border fee as above; but your funds will be transferred from the sending currency to GBP in our conversion rates before your funds will be credited to your account.

If the sender is sending the payment in GBP, you will receive the funds in GBP and our system will not be required to initiate a conversion on the transaction, but the cross border fee will still apply on a payment being received from a different country.

I hope this helps.

David.