I have an embarrassingly basic auction question to ask. I just won a coin at auction for a surprise lowball bid that paid off. The coin ended up being €35.80. I used Wise to transfer money. I transferred $41.41 to equal precisely €35.80. The Wise app does that calculation for me. But do people handle the currency transfer amount differently? Would you, for example, just send an even $42, which results in a little more than the expected euro amount? Or do you send enough US currency to equal an even euro amount (e.g., €36)? Or do you send the precise amount in US currency to equal exactly the invoiced amount, as I did? I think I’ve done it multiple ways. Do the auction houses prefer the exact amount in targeted currency so their invoice matches the transfer? Is there a best practice?
Wise and PayPal allow one to transfer money in the target currency. It's a matter of choosing which currency to use.
Ditto. I always transfer in the target currency. Note that with PayPal they deliberately give you a bad rate, so you'll pay more. My credit card always gives a competitive market rate, so I have them do the conversion.
I guess mine is a stupid question. Why wouldn’t one send the exact amount? This is what I see when I send money on my app: I think in the past I have rounded up one number or the other— for example, either sending $42, or ensuring the recipient gets €36, as opposed to trying to hit the precise amount. But I guess there’s no logic to that gesture.
I assume Wise works the same as PayPal in that regard - if you select the currency/amount the recipient is going to get (which you should - to match whatever you've been invoiced), then that is what they'll get and the dollar amount you pay will be adjusted accordingly. No need to second guess and round it up.
I believe in most auctions the auction house shows the price plus buyers fee in their local currency and the payments firm collects from you in U.S. dollar equivalents. In the case of Swiss francs they are more valuable than the dollar so you end up paying more dollars at the end of the day. I use Stripe most of the time as my payments processor for Europe (lower fees than paypal).
