@benjojo eBay does the same, and they also have the gall to "warn you" that if you decide to pay in a foreign currency "they can't guarantee how much you'll be effectively charged." Well, I do know: less than they'd charge me, every single time

@benjojo Every company that does "pay in local currency" is doing horrifying FX arbitrage, but then your bank is doing the same too if you don't use it. I love my Wise debit card for this reason.

@benjojo@benjojo.co.uk yuuuup

basically everywhere, if the seller (or their provider) offers you a currency exchange option, it's almost universally worse than what your bank offers as they skim some percent off that.

@benjojo the card networks also hate the shit out of it because the rate is always awful, but they're not legally allowed to ban it

@erincandescent @benjojo what's the downside for the card networks

@hikari @benjojo high chargeback rate, bad customer experience, they lose their (generally smaller and quite reasonable) exchange rate cut

@benjojo From a merchant's perspective, it's quite bad too, whether they use Adaptive Pricing or not.

Merchants can set fixed local currency price or use Adaptive Pricing.

If you saw the conversion rate and fee disclosure on the checkout page, then it's Adaptive Pricing. Stripe adds 2-4% fees to customers: https://docs.stripe.com/payments/currencies/localize-prices/adaptive-pricing?payment-ui=stripe-hosted#pricing

Merchants still must pay 1.5% fee for non-US cards, with or without local/adaptive pricing. (AFAIK this also applies to non-US Stripe merchant accounts.)

Merchants also pay 1% for currency conversion when not using Adaptive Pricing. (With Adaptive Pricing, cost is passed on to customers.)

@benjojo I actually did not realize that Adaptive Pricing fees for customers were so high until now. It does increase conversion rates, but now I feel bad that I'm passing on extra costs to customers. I previously thought it was shifting the same conversion fees that merchants used to pay over to the customer.

@benjojo most of the major online acquirers have an offer like that (eg PayPal). I’ve found it varies between “worth it if you want price certainty now” (eg time window to get an expense claim in) and “that’s expensive”, from day to day.

Avoiding the “pay in local currency” is probably better value if your card provider doesn’t charge an additional fee for each non-local-currency transaction. (Mine does charge a fee, narrowing the cost difference.)