Dear GanpatiShopee,
Well it is good to see that you have tried on paypal but unfortunately it is also dissapointing to see that you have not worked upon the important issue of " Foreign currency management ", before you have started to Export !!!!
My dear seller, selling internationally also needs good planning on the currency and payments issue and hence you first need to identify the various modes available, and also a little bit of how do they work and then understand that how do they all make money. I mean all modes of payments ae routed thru various institutions like Bank TT / Wire Transfer, Credit card and bank terminals like PayPal, International Payment instruments, Western Union (although not authorised for commercial payments and also not to be used on EBay India ) , or for that matter when you give accross some physical foreign currency to a Travel agent or bank etc. who does the conversions. etc. You may also want to see when you personally buy something from a Foreign currency site, listed in say USD, and you use your Indian Credit card to make the payment, the currency conversion rate is higher and hence you pay more of Indian Rupees for that dollar amount. ??? The reason is explained below.
You can visit our Messages posted on the other discussion board " Recieving payments from international buuyers ".
Ok, so the First thing is a FOREX CONVERSION rate. This is the rate that we can see on the TV Business News channel say CNBC. These rates are something like stock and differe every second. But what matters for any payments are the closing rates or the END OF THE DAY RATES.
Then comes the actual modes of transfer : Bank Transfer has the closest rate of this forex transfer and hence is the Best mode, when dealing with Advanced / regular Export Payments. All exporters use this. It is called Bankw Swift Code Transfer / simply a Wire Transfer. But this may not be a helpful mode for all ebay customers, internationally as most of the customers are Retail customer or lets put them as Consumers. So they will not like to take up the pains to walk into a bank and then give them instructions for such a Transfer, althoug it is a simple procedure but like for us here in India, banks are just say 15 - 30 - 45 min. away but for most of the customers we come accross, their banks are 1 hour - 2 hours away.
Therefore the second AND THE BEST and the most viable mode if PayPal. But you need to remember that Paypal is NOT A BANK and hence also buys and sells it's foreign currency to a bank and hence has a lower currency conversion rate than the bank. But this is the most convenient for Ebay International Customers since all of them or let's say MOST of them use PayPal so for them to pay a seller all over the globe is most easy and just come clicks away !!! This currency conversion difference is called the " Currency Widespread " Charge and this is around 2.5 - 3 % approximately. Also that PayPal buys and sells International currency from it's bank 2 times a Day, hence there can be some difference in the base price at each point level.
Lot of exporters do this little management and all international selling business need to keep a track of the currency conversion and manage them acordingly.
HOW TO MANAGE THIS is an Individual affair and a business decision as well.
Coming to the other methods like Western Union money transfrer,which has the WORST currency conversions as this is a NON COMMERCIAL way to send money. I mean only for personal reasons you should be sending money and hence this is the MOST expensive in terms of the expences incurred for the transaction as well has the worst rates and hence this is their Profits. Similarly converting physical foreign currency into Indian is also the lowest rates of the bank, and just also try using your Indian credit card on a foreign terminal and you will see that BANKS are more or equally expensive in their currency conversion rates as compared to direct PayPal.
So I hope this may haveanswered your query well. If in this international business, the currency conversion is part of a risk and one should know how to manage this and understand each aspect in some details to you can make it simpler for yourself and your customer. If one is serious, he will take out ways to manage doing things, after all Selling internationally is also Lucrative enough for all this smart work !!! You initially may be doing the HARD work, but if you try you will end up doing the SMART WORK AS WELL !!! TRUST US here !!!
- The Cyberwiz
Anchanting Kolors
