How much is Ebay earning from the conversion of currency?

[shallow_karl]

Before, when Paypal was the recipient, there was no conversion from U.S. to Can. until the seller initiated it.  Now, Ebay is converting.  In addition, if any adjustments need to be done, (shipping refund, whatever) the money is reconverted back to U.S. funds if the buyer was in the U.S.  So the money is converted twice.

[flipistics]

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@shallow_karl wrote:

Before, when Paypal was the recipient, there was no conversion from U.S. to Can. until the seller initiated it.  Now, Ebay is converting.  In addition, if any adjustments need to be done, (shipping refund, whatever) the money is reconverted back to U.S. funds if the buyer was in the U.S.  So the money is converted twice.

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I believe they charge 3%. I think PayPal now charges 4% for whatever it's worth, so it doesn't appear to be out of line.  

[femmefan1946]

Banks also charge a fee for money changing.

And there is a different price for buying and for selling currencies.

One thing that likely exacerbates this is that we call our currency the same name as the USA (and Australia and Hong Kong and Zimbabwe, for that matter.)  I think that adds to the confusion and annoyance.

[recped]

How much is Ebay earning from the conversion of currency?

eBay charges sellers 3%, if eBay is able to to bulk covert the funds (converting for multiple buyers/transactions they may be able to get their exchange costs down to about .7% from the published "mid-market rate), thus they are pocketing 2.3%.

If YOU go to a bank to convert a small amount of funds you would pay the bank at least 2.5% on the mid-market rate.

Bottom line, you are probably paying eBay about .5% more than "necessary".

Of course if you were listing on .ca the exchange costs would be paid by the BUYER not the seller.

If you are listing exclusively on .com you should have picked US Dollars as your currency for Managed Payment, you would then get US Dollar payouts which you could convert or not, pick the best day to do the conversion and use a service like Wise to do the conversion at a much lower rate than eBay or your bank. Do that and eBay makes NOTHING.

Unfortunately with Managed Payment you must pick the currency when you register and unlike with PayPal you are stuck with that choice (with PayPal you could change once per year).

Of course the currency exchange is not the only additional money you pay eBay when listing on .com, Store fees are higher and International fees are higher. Bottom line is that your costs are about 5% higher to list/sell on .com vs .ca