I am trying to find out what is the best way (ie: losing the least on exchange fees) to get money paid by my US and Canadian customers into my European bank account in EUROs.

Ultimately, I need:

1) To allow my customers to pay in either USD or CAD.
2) To get the money into my French account in EURO.

I have a residence in Canada, USA, and France (I'm a citizen of all three, actually), so it's no problem there. (I'm lucky!) :)

Currently, I do this:


Customer pays at PayPal with either USD or CAD currency. I have a seperate USD balance and a sepeate CAD balance in my PayPal account.

After the PayPal balance hits $5000 for either the USD or CAD balances, I transfer the money to either my Canadian bank account or my US bank account.

I then initiate a trade at www.xetrade.com, which transfers the money from my Canadian or US bank account to xetrade, who then does the exchange, and wire transfer the resulting money (in EURO) into my French bank account.


Is there a better way? (ie: Losing less on exchange fees?)

I have just opened a new PayPal account for France, and am thinking of maybe allowing customers to pay in USD or CAD into this new PayPal account. But then when I withdraw, it would be to my EURO account in France... and the problem is that I don't know if the exchange rate offered by PayPal would be better/worse then that offered by www.xetrade.com (plus cost of wire transfer).

Any thoughts?

I don't think a French PayPal account allows you to deposit money into CAD bank account. (You can deposit to USD in a US bank account and EUR in a French bank account.)

I don't know the exchange rate in xetrade, but I can tell you PayPal exchange rate is the worst I have seen. It is at least 2.5% lower than the current bank rate. (Example: bank rate: 1USD~7.75HKD PayPal rate: 1USD~7.59HKD)

I don't think a French PayPal account allows you to deposit money into CAD bank account. (You can deposit to USD in a US bank account and EUR in a French bank account.)

Here's what I would do, if I use the PayPal idea:

1) Customer buys product from my US PayPal account. They pay in either USD or CAD.

2) When I have $5k in funds in my US PayPal account, I "send" the money to my French PayPal account.

3) My French PayPal account is a "personal" account, so it can receive money from another PayPal account with no fees. I would,however, have to pay a 2.5% currency exchange fee for the transaction, since it would be necessary to convert USD/CAD to EURO.

So with this method, I would end up paying a total of 2.5% over the exchange rate. (Source: PayPal European fee page (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside&countries=EU))

I think this method would be good for "quick money transfers".. but I think I get a better exchange rate with my www.xetrade.com account. (However, it takes about 1 week minimum to make a transfer.)