Paypal deliberately charging in foreign currency to take advantage of the exchange rate

[cgaisano]

• I am using a dual currency card PHP (local currency) and USD.
• Purchased several items via Paypal in PHP amount (local sellers).
• In Paypal summary they are billed as PHP.
• But in credit card statement they are billed in USD.
• Why did Paypal charged them as USD in my credit card? I was wondering if this was deliberate so Paypal could make some extra money from the exchange rate.

Any of you experienced the same?

[PayPal_Michelle]

Hi @cgaisano!

Welcome to the PayPal Community! Generally, payments will default to the country's primary currency went we process it to the bank or card. However from your description, it sounds as though the currency set for the card in question is set in USD and not PHP. This can happen if the card issuer sends a notification in processing that the primary currency is USD. This would mean that we could only process purchases in USD for that specific card. 

This can be corrected, but you would need to contact our customer support directly to do so. To do this, please follow the Help & Contact link at the bottom of the page, or you can also reach us on Facebook or at @AskPayPal on Twitter.  

I hope this helps and thank you for joining the Community!

Michelle

If this post or any other was helpful, please enrich the community by giving kudos or accepting it as a solution.

[cgaisano]

Hi Michelle thanks for the response. However there was no option during my purchase if I want to pay in PHP or USD. The option was only in PHP so I assumed that was the default. Also my credit card's primary currency is PHP so I have no idea why it went with USD.

[cgaisano]

Hi Michelle,

I got a response from customer rep.  They were saying that the card's default is USD and can only help me set it to PHP for future transactions.

Also, I do not understand why it was defaulted to USD since there was no option to set a primary currency.

I assumed that it was automatically set to PHP since my card's primary currency is PHP and all the purchases I made were local where they were invoiced in PHP including the billing from Paypal.

Furthermore, I felt cheated that it was secretly converted to USD since I had to pay double. 1) for Paypal's exchange rate from PHP to USD and 2) for the credit card company's exchange rate from USD to PHP.

I hope you understand my concern and raise this to your management so you can improve your services further. This seems like a trap for first time users.