Currency exchange fee

Before you were building parts in New York, NY, USA, there was a currency exchange fee added to credit card transactions from the USA. There was no currency exchange fee if a direct transfer from a bank account was used. Naturally, I have used the direct transfer ever since.

Now that you have processing facilities in the USA, I was wondering if the credit card currency exchange fee has been removed.

If that is the case, it will be annoying

That's very odd.. I've never seen such a fee being applied. I wonder if it was your credit card vendor and their interaction with Paypal.

Were you seeing the fee FROM Shapeways?

The fee was from my credit card vendor, for exchanging US dollars to Euros. Many credit card vendors have similar fees. I did not notice the fee until I received my credit card statement, several weeks after the purchase. This particular purchase was in December 2010.

PayPal also charges more for international transactions: 3.5% vs 2.9%

The particular question is:
Do you use a US bank for US transactions or are all transactions still processed by a bank in Europe?

Hi Guys,

You're right those charges are coming from your own credit cards, not Shapeways.

To clarify:
Shapeways hasn't ever charged a currency exchange fee. Except for Canadian and US customers, our NY operations should have no impact on customers with ship-to addresses.

The answer to the new question (is bank transfer an option for sales to the US & Canada?) is: Bank transfer is not currently a payment option for US & Canada customers. PayPal's options for eCheck payment and linked bank accounts may be a more attractive option that is available in the US & Canada.

However, these are non-instant payment options, so orders are not accepted until payment is complete, which can be several days.

Hope that helps,

Natalia

PayPal does, under certain conditions, offer direct instantaneous transfer from my bank account to shapeways bank account.

But that is NOT my new question!

Quite simply, my question:
Does PayPal and my credit card vendor consider a payment from me, in the USA, to Shapeways to be an international transaction?


I'm not sure exactly how this would work, but I suspect Shapeways, would need TWO different PayPal accounts. One account that goes to a bank in USA and the other that goes to a bank in Europe. Your web site would need to select the appropriate PayPal account depending on the shipping address. PayPal may possibly have a way to handle this kind of switching internally to PayPal, but I don't really know.

The fee was for exchanging Dollars into Euros. As long as you pay in the currency you hold your account in you won't get charged this fee. Those of us that work in Sterling are always charged it when buying at SW.
Paypal change a conversion fee between currencies
If you hold both Dollar and Euro accounts at your bank they would charge you the same fee when you transferred money between accounts.
Some companies hide the transaction fee inside the exchange rate they charge.