Does anyone know if you have to pay a currency conversion fee if you sell to someone in the USA ? I have sold direct before and had to pay a fee to paypal to convert dollars to pound and wondered if it was the same if you sold through folksy or (dare I say it) etsy?
I’ve never had this happen before Roz. @Rozcraftz on either Folksy or Etsy.
What you get in your paypal account is not always the exact same as the figure in stirling you have charged because it depends on the current exchange rate.
On the Dark Side you can receive payments via Etsy or by using their Direct Checkout system. Either way Paypal charge a fee or the Dark Side charges a fee. But it’s not a currency conversion fee because they would charge the same if you were being paid in £stirling.
How much was the fee you had to pay to Paypal?
Shirley x
I think the amount I was charging was about $100 and I believe I paid a fee of about $10 although some of that may have been the normal paypal charge. I just remember thinking at the time that I hadn’t accounted for the additional fee.
10% does seem high Roz @Rozcraft.
Most of my Etsy sales are now Direct Checkout and Etsy pays me direct in Stirling taking out their handling fee (similar to Paypal). Etsy’s fees for Direct Checkout workout at 4.75%
My last Etsy receipt by Paypal was at the end of May. The total amount in the shop was £28.05 and that was the full amount paid into Paypal and then paypal deducted £1.29 which amounts to 4.5%. Nothing shows about converting between dollars and pounds. My Etsy shop is set to £stirling currency and so is my Paypal account.
The only time I see currency conversions going on are when I buy from outside the UK.
I think it may depend on how you have your Paypal account set up Roz.
Shirley x
Thanks I’ll look into it. I billed the customer directly using paypal as the item was sold through facebook. On etsy you can get prices displayed in other currencies and I think they may deal with it in the initial currency conversion as when I looked at the item in USD it was listed at more than I worked it out at. Not sure how folksy deals with overseas currencies though as it is a UK Site and I don’t think you have the option to look at prices in other currencies.
I think if you set your prices in pounds (not the overseas currency), that’s what you get paid. I have my etsy account set to sterling, and I only have a sterling paypal account, so everything gets converted from the sterling amount for buyers - they pay in their own currency and it gets converted back to my original sterling price, so I don’t lose anything on conversion. If you invoice in dollars, paypal will charge the buyer in dollars and convert it back to sterling at the prevailing rate, and charge you a fee for doing it. Keep everything in sterling and you should be fine.
As Christine said you would get your full amount in GBP and then paypal takes their commission. The same with DC any difference in the exchange rate goes to the buyer in whichever country they are based The bank charges are still taken out with DC Audrey
When Paypal converts your $s to £s they charge 2.5%, but it is ‘hidden’ in the currency conversion rate so you won’t actually see it as a charge. It’s not an issue unless you are setting your prices in $s, then you need to take it into account.
The Paypal transaction charges do vary for cross border transactions, for some countries it is as much as 4.9%. Still, a $10 charge on $100 seems a lot.
On Folksy the prices are in £s so any currency conversion will be done at the buyers end and won’t affect what you receive, just the amount that they pay.
Thanks for the replies. Think it might be sensible to direct any facebook enquiries to my shop then. At least then I know what charges I will be faced with.
You can still sell directly from Facebook, but make sure you issue the invoice in sterling, not dollars. The buyer will then have to foot the exchange rate cost, not you.
Ah maybe that’s where I went wrong, thanks for that.
Great advice Christine, I’ve just changed mine all to sterling, thank you for pointing that out!
Emma