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Comment by ssl232 | Hacker News Reader

I recall a pattern they used to use, probably illegal, when paying for a flight quoted in a foreign currency. Ryanair would "helpfully" offer for you to pay in your own currency with their awful exchange rate, with the option to instead pay in the advertised foreign currency (thus making use of your credit card's exchange rate - typically the market rate) on a pop-up only visible if you click the tiny "more information" link made to look like terms and conditions. The opt-out was not even on the same page, invisible to anyone but those most alert to these tricks. That probably netted them a good 10% extra margin on 95% of sales through deception. Disgraceful behaviour.

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Paypal does this as well.

They'll convert to your card's currency automatically and the option to revert is hidden behind an inconspicuous "See other currency options" prompt

So, if you buy a ticket (in a foreign currency) with RyanAir and you pay via PayPal, you'll need to choose NOT to use the currency converter twice!

IIRC they even use multiple different wordings and layouts for this dialogue, depending on what "mode" of Paypal you're using (e.g. if it's a pop-up or if it's a full page redirect; I dunno how to describe it technically). I have to use it a lot and even I've been tricked a few times. It's literally theft and I can't believe they get away with it

Damn, I didn't know this, that's insane. I've been paying with the converted currency for ages. Thanks for sharing.

PayPal once quietly added my European card (EUR zone) as USD. And when I paid for a product in EUR, it "thoughtfully" (for them) converted the amount twice using their special currency exchange rate.

You can't do without airports and airlines, but why PayPal still exists in 2024 - I don't understand.

>You can't do without airports and airlines, but why PayPal still exists in 2024 - I don't understand.

What don't you understand? In the US, the party that says "the government should not interfere with business" wins a lot of elections and the party that says "the government should protect consumers from corporate harm" wins way fewer elections.

So we have almost no consumer protections, so it's largely not illegal or risky for a business to fuck over their consumers which is very profitable so most businesses fuck over their consumers in various ways.

Yeah it's the US's fault if a corporation misbehaves in Europe. It's so sad that Europe cannot legislate or do anything about it. PayPal is just inevitable I guess. Wait no, Europe is more than capable of doing that but they don't care about it either. Hence why they also don't do anything against Ryanair. Oops!

What does this have to do with the government? My point was that PayPal is terrible and why is there no widely used alternative to it? I know there are alternatives, but usually only about 5 people use them. And somehow in Germany (and it seems in the US too) everyone still uses PayPal.

>why PayPal still exists in 2024

Because they have a ton of users. People who don’t have credit card numbers saved on autofill so PayPal is more convenient. People also think it’s safer because the website doesn’t see your card number

I struggle to see how it is convenient. At least on Android, when you pay for something, it doesn't use the installed app, but makes you login in the browser. And they still don't support 2FA or Passkeys properly, making me to receive an SMS almost every time.

I can't answer that because I rarely use paypal myself. In fact they banned one of my two accounts (personal, business) for using gift cards which makes me uninterested in using the other one more than once a year.

That aside, I've seen many normal people use it for the reasons I described: They don't want to type in their card number and they think it's unsafe to type in their card number. It's (literally) all in their head so don't think too hard about it.

The practical alternative is Apple Pay, but you can't use it on Android.

This infuriates me because it’s automatic if a merchant has “fast checkout” enabled.

Part of the broader Dynamic Currency Conversion scam, also found in person etc. Not as common as it used to be but when travelling I had to be quite forceful in stating I want to pay in $LocalCurrency . I've had many establishments ignore my request, select GBP, then hand me the terminal asking for my pin, then feigning ignorance when I explain that they are trying to cheat me

The differences involved make money if you are talking about the whole population but for an individual payment it's a relatively small difference. I'm not sure what would motivate someone handing you a card reader to try to cheat you - they can't possibly be making any money out of it.

> I'm not sure what would motivate someone handing you a card reader to try to cheat you

Immense pressure from their boss?

The first few times I let it go, wanting to believe an honest mistake, but when it started happening so frequently, I realised _someone_ in the chain is trying to scam me.

Anyone below an international corporation isn't getting cut in on the benefits. Maybe the big hotels and car rental (being large enough for the card companies to negotiate such a thing with in addition to having a significant enough percentage of foreign card transactions) services would see some benefit from that but I don't think most places would care.

There is always the other side that, although it's not a competitive exchange rate, at least you know the exact amount in your home currency. Also, I never remember which cards have foreign currency fees so it is a bit of a wash.

I can’t imagine the merchant gets that extra currency conversion money, nor why they’d care, they are still getting the exact same amount in their local currency while it’s their bank who profits on the arbitrage.

This is becoming more and more common. Originally I saw it only at sketchy ATMs but it is now nearly ubiquitous in many places. Sites like Amazon and even POS systems at restaurants and grocery stores now try the same trick.

It ought to be illegal, in fact it ought to be retroactively illegal and these companies should be forced to refund any money they've made this way. It's just a pure money grab from confused customers.

This is every other ATM in Prague (euronet is the name I think), they helpfully convert it for you with like 30% markup. These people (and the lawmarkers that permit this) should be publicly flogged.

Virtually all banks in Prague offer this (extremely expensive) convenience.

What pisses me even more off is that most ATMs charge an additional fee for their usage. The exception being KB (Societe Generale) and Raiffeisenbank.

I see this all over the place and I've by now learned to always answer "no" if anybody offers currency conversion. It's sometimes difficult, because some terminals will only show you a choice of currencies, and you have to remember to pick the local currency (local to the store you are paying in) and let your bank do the conversion at their (terrible) rates, rather than pay a 10% markup.

Same here. I often write down the converted sum and then reject conversion. Later I compare my notes with the the conversion done my bank issue the credit card.

It was always so that my bank was cheaper, until very recently when it would have been to opposite way for the first time. Both my banks have recently raised their conversion fees, I think they are now 2.3% - 2.5%.

That still sounds better than the exorbitant fees some dodgy businesses are charging. I don't know whether it was a rare exception that the bank was more expensive or whether it becomes more common.

Also seen on Booking.com.

How is this any different than banks that charge outrageous fees for converting currencies, or heck even currency retail brokers in high traffic tourist destinations.

Most banks charge a lot less for their customers. In this era of debit/credit cards that convert automatically, offering to do a currency conversion at a higher fee than basically any bank, and relying on customers to be not savvy enough to know that is scammy.

Unfortunately common practice across a few industries. Ryanair has been doing this for a while (and still do).

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