Australian PayPal users are complaining due to a cross border fee for sending money to a friend or family member who lives outside Australia. PayPal overseas personal payments from Australia attract the fee regardless of funding source.
Within Australia, it’s free to send money to friends and family if your funding source is a PayPal balance or an Australian bank account. If you fund the transfer by debit or credit card then a 2.6% plus fixed fee or $0.30 AUD applies.
Send money outside Australia however, and PayPal impose the same fees but tag an additional $5.99 AUD to the transfer fees. That’s about and additional £3.30 in UK money and the additional fee came into force on the 5th of April 2018.
If you’re sending small sums of money then the additional cross border fee might appear ridiculously high to you. It’s still cheaper than many banks will charge for International Transfers, but Australians might rightly be a little indignant as the cost of moving money gets more expensive.
It’s even more expensive than the fees to send money when you remember that either the recipient or the sender will also incur currency conversion charges which are set at PayPal’s rates which vary between 2.5% and 4% depending which currencies you’re converting from and to.
PayPal insider Tip
To access the best PayPal currency conversion rates, convert the money within your PayPal account (2.5%) rather than as part of a payment (3.5% to 4%).
It’s also worth noting that these changes are for Australian users sending personal payments. If the recipient was to send you a PayPal invoice for a ‘business’ transaction then the fees would be considerably less!
