Stop Currency Conversion in Subscriptions

[tanysh]

PayPal is incredibly sneaky in defaulting to automatic currency conversions and charging obscene rates, often hiding the option to transact using the original currency. While this can be overriden with some effort for payments, subscriptions are a whole different affair. The new subscription form only accepts a card input (PayPal balance not accepted) and even though the subscription currency is in USD, PayPal sneakily tries to bill using my address currency without my consent. I use Revolut for much better rates and pre-converted the USD amount, leaving no native currency balance, and the subscription was rejected. This is not acceptable and I refuse to pay exhorbitant FX rates, especially when I am not informed prior and did not provide express consent.

[PayPal_Bindu]

Hello @tanysh,

Welcome to our community forum and thank you for your post!

I understand your concern about the currency conversion charges. When paying in a different currency with your card, you can either choose PayPal conversion or your card issuer's conversion process. You can learn more about how to view and change currency conversion options here.

You can select a currency conversion preference when you set up a billing agreement or subscription payments using a card. The currency conversion preference you select remains in effect for future billing agreements and subscriptions funded with the same card. To set up this preference, follow these steps:

Click the Settings icon.
Click the Payments tab.
Click Manage automatic payments.
Select the automatic payment you wish to update.
Click Bank Or Card On File beside 'Payment method'.
Click See Conversion options next to the affected card.

I hope this information helps!

Bindu

[tanysh]

That is a lie. There is NO currency conversion option whatsoever in the new subscription form. If you are logged in to PayPal, you get to pick a card and it immediately bills you in the currency of your country address rather than the currency requested by the subscription. If you are not logged into PayPal, you are asked to enter credit card details manually and it does the same thing. Stop lying and defrauding customers into involuntary paying fees.

[PayPal_Bindu]

Hey @tanysh,

Sorry for the inconvenience! In this situation, your best option would be to reaching our team by clicking the contact us option at the bottom of PayPal page or send us a message through our Twitter(@AskPayPal) and Facebook page for additional assistance.

Have a great day!

Bindu

[mzabaluev]

Thanks for this guideline, but I've found that my conversion preferences for automatic payments are not honored even after being changed.
The next payment I've made used conversion at PayPal rates, and even charged the wrong card.

[Brandoon]

Just weighing to say this has also been my experience as of December 2023. No mention made of exchange rate at the time of subscribing, and so I had assumed the transactions would be passed through to my card in the transaction currency. I at no point agreed to an exchange by Paypal. Notably I cannot even find the conversion preference setting in the mobile app. Perhaps the app has been restructured since this advice above. Either way, I would not trust paypal for this use case.

[tanysh]

Nothing has been done by PayPal, who continue to mislead and defraud customers into paying unnecessary fees without prior consent. Whenever you see services that use PayPal's subscription platform, you should write to them to ask that they terminate PayPal and use other payment gateways. There are plenty of alternatives and all of them will honour the original currency instead of forcing a ridiculous exchange rate without consent like what PayPal does.