Managing different currencies in the same Business account?

[GwynethLlewelyn]

At one point in the very distant past, when I had a humble personal account, you could add several currencies to your Wallet, and these would be managed separately and independently. This seems not to be the case any more, or, if it is, how do I actually activate it?

Here is what I'm attempting to achieve:

• I have Euro as the primary currency, and USD and GBP as secondaries.
• My (linked) banks and cards are primarily Euro accounts (although at least one bank account holds multiple currencies as well).
• I receive and make payments in either of the three currencies, independently of each other.
• Obviously, when paying in one currency, and when checking "payment from PayPal balance" as the primary source of payment, I expect that the payment will first pick the amount on that currency, and the remainder from the others (converting them in the process), and, if all else fails, pulling money from credit cards, banks, etc.

Now this is how it did work, say, a decade ago. There are still archived forum replies from back then showing where to go to activate that option/preference. Obviously, the website was redesigned (many times?) since then and that option isn't available there any longer. There are other options, though, but none I could find that did the same thing as before.

What happens is simple, and has been reported in several threads here on the community forums: anything that I receive, no matter what currency it comes in, gets converted (and credited to) the Euro account. Everything I pay, no matter if the currency is listed on the Wallet or not, will be converted from Euros first. Therefore, my USD and GBP accounts are usually at zero. There have been some mysterious exceptions in the past, as when I got a refund in GBP, which remained in the GBP account and wasn't converted automatically (exactly as expected!); but this is a rather rare event, it's been a few years since that happened.

Since most of the time I receive in Euros, the question has been moot — there would be always conversions to GBP or USD when paying. But recently I have received a few amounts from a US company, which obviously pays me in USD. And I thought, great, because that way I've got some dollars to pay some things directly without needing to worry about exchange rates. But that's not what happens.

In fact, for all purposes, it looks like I do not have two additional currencies in my Wallet at all! It's as if the system is only registering what currencies I accept, even if it will always convert everything to Euros! In other words, people paying me in US$, £, or €, can do so in their own currency, but it all gets converted at my side. Anyone using other currencies — say, Yen or Swiss Franks — will somehow either be refused to pay me, or (very likely) they will be given the choice of doing the conversion on their side.

But this has nothing to do with having a "USD account" and a "GBP account" tied to my Wallet. They seem only to serve as placeholders to signal which currencies I accept. This is not how it used to work.

I'm not quite sure if this is a limitation of Business accounts? (if it is, it's a quite stupid one, IMHO) Or — more likely — this option mentioned a decade ago is now further hidden somewhere else? Note that when adding a new currency — whatever is now meant by that! — PayPal adds a warning at the very top, in very fine letters:

When you add a currency, any payments you receive in that currency will be credited to that balance. We'll use your primary currency when you send or request payments.

On a quick reading of the above, it seems they're implying that when you receive Euros, it goes to your Euro account; when your receive USD, it goes to your USD account; and so forth. While when paying (especially if such payments are made automatically) they will use the primary currency.

But perhaps I'm getting this all wrong. Perhaps what is really meant is that you may get payments in other currencies, sure, but that doesn't matter, because we will always pay from your primary currency, no matter what. We need our currency exchange fees to get filthy rich, remember? 😄

So, can anyone clarify this and explain me where I'm wrong? 😊

My roomie, who has a basic account, has no issues whatsoever, she receives in US$ and pays in US$, and converts everything to Euros when transferring back to her bank account. 

I could obviously change my primary currency to be USD. I'm not sure if I'm forced to use Euro, just because I'm in the EuroZone. However, the problem is that I cannot predict when payments are incoming. I can imagine that, using PayPal's API, you might be able to get a notification of an incoming payment in, say, GBP, and then immediately trigger GBP to become the primary currency, accept the payment, and revert it back to Euros. I haven't toyed with the API for over a decade now and I admit I'm rusty. And no... I really don't have the time or the patience to do an "automatic primary currency switcher" running on one of my servers (the idea is tempting though...).

I thought to myself, why would anyone be willing to accept a set of currencies, but not the others? In other words: why shouldn't I simply accept all currencies that PayPal offers? (Is there a limit?) And then it hit me (I'm sorry, I'm a bit slow sometimes): it's irrelevant which currency you use, if you're using a strong currency, like, well, USD, GBP, EUR, YEN, SFR and a few others, because the conversion rates between them will not be astronomically different. That means that you're fine in converting the currency on your side instead. It's more convenient for the customer, and, from your perspective, it's a bit irrelevant — that's one of the advantages of strong currencies, after all. The problem, of course, is if you start accepting weak currencies as well: if you have a strong currency, you will get a terrible exchange rate when receiving money! Therefore, it does make sense to say, "Sorry, no Venezuelan bolívares accepted here" (assuming that this would be an acceptable currency, of course).

Any pointers are welcome, even pointers to PayPal official documents saying "we used to allow what you want, but now we're sorry, you get one currency account only" or "this works only for personal accounts, not business accounts".

Cheers!

— Gwyn