How to stop PayPal from converting currency
To stop PayPal from converting currency, decline PayPal's conversion at checkout and choose to pay in the seller's currency, letting your card issuer or bank handle the exchange.
- Open currency options: On the payment review screen, before completing the purchase, look for See currency options or Other conversion options.
- Pick the seller's currency: Choose to be billed in the seller's local currency rather than your home currency.
- Convert with your card or bank: Select conversion by your card issuer or bank, which generally uses a better exchange rate than the markup PayPal adds.
PayPal no longer has a global setting that switches off conversion by default for standard checkouts, so this choice has to be made manually on each new one-time purchase.
Paying through your card network's rate is one way to reduce currency conversion fees, but recurring charges need a separate change. Subscriptions, bookings and pre-approved payments each carry their own conversion setting in PayPal.
- Go to Settings: Log in to PayPal and click the gear icon.
- Open Automatic Payments: Click Payments, then select Automatic Payments.
- Choose the merchant: Pick the specific vendor from your list of automatic payments.
- Select the payment method: Click the card or linked payment method used for that merchant.
- Change conversion: Open Conversion Options and switch it to convert with your card or bank instead of PayPal.
Repeat these steps for every merchant with an automatic payment, since updating one vendor does not change the setting for the others.