Sadly I was in a hurry to do my transaction and accidentally hit the USD button and thus subject to Paypal's horrible exchange rate (normally 2 or so points worse than prevailing credit card rate). What is worse is the refund a week later was hit with the double whammy of the latest horrible rate plus some additional loading ("fees, spread" ) etc. To baseline, the original USD/GBP market rate was 1.24 on April 4, moving to 1.26 on the 12th. On the 4th PayPal used a rate of 1.294 (roughly twice or more of the spread you get from the bank/credit card conversion) then today they refund at 1.23. So roughly I lose 6 points on a 2 point market movement so PayPal is profiting at roughly 3x market movements. Moral of the story: NEVER do ANY foreign currency transactions with PayPal - they are uncompetitive and profit-taking. If you want convenience just ALWAYS bill in original currency to your credit card, or if sending cash use a service such as Wise. This PayPal model is the 40 year old bank model of profiting and simply old economy in this day and age
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