I’ve made two purchases in the last week using PayPal where the amount was in USD. On both occasions, I had the option to pay in USD and let Starling handle the conversion, though it did default to PayPal doing the conversion each time. It was easy enough to change, though.
Yes, this is what they did to me. There was no opt in to the CPA or warning that I was setting up a CPA. For a one-off transaction, that was incredibly deceptive.
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My Monzo Mastercard
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I think this is the crux of it. Some merchants do use CPAs for one-off payments - CloudFlare want a payment method to be “set-up” and then stored permanently against the account basically. You can then use it when buying individual items. The CPA then doesn’t properly give you the option of opting out of DCC. The first I knew about it was the payment confirmation email.
I complained to both PayPal and Cloudflare. PayPal fobbed me off, much as they did to you. Cloudflare said they had no control over what PayPal did and advised that I use a debit card directly to avoid this in future.
I’ve not yet complained to MasterCard but it pissed me off, so considering it.
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Yep, exactly the same scenario.
I used Italki (a language website). In the past, I’ve paid direct by debit card and it’s been fine, and always charged my card in USD.
This time I paid via PayPal (because the Italki fee was a tiny bit lower) and ended up in a CPA. I checked the CPA list on PayPal and I’ve got one for transactions I made back in 2008. What a shambles. I’ve deleted them all now.
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Putting aside the issue of merchant not making it clear you were entering a CPA, lack of currency handling option for CPA seems to be expected behaviour. Just got the following from Paypal support:
Please be guided that the currency conversion option to be applied on a debit/credit card is only available for one-time payments. It’s not applicable on pre-approved payments, subscriptions, or billing agreements.
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That wouldn’t stand up in court because of the lack of warning that you’re entering a CPA.
It would be like requesting a BACS transfer and the bank sends it as CHAPS without telling you and charges £25. And when you complain, they say, but that’s the CHAPS charge.
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PayPal charged my US credit card in US$ at their rate instead of in £‘s (the transaction and my PayPal account currency).
On every other occasion it asked me and I declined as I have no FTFs but this one time it didn’t ask and they just did it anyway. When I complained they told me to refund the transaction and do it again and they’ll refund all fees, however what they actually did was apply another dynamic conversion prior to refunding it.
These were not small sums of money so they took a lot, then promptly decided not to engage with resolving it.
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I suppose the more pertinent point here is, “is that in line with MasterCard’s policies”
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What is Mastercard’s policy?
An Acquirer or Merchant may offer DCC at the point of interaction, provided that the offering complies with all of the following requirements:
Before the Cardholder decides on the currency in which the transaction is to be completed, and before an authorization or pre-authorization request for the transaction is submitted, it is essential that:
- The Cardholder is first informed either verbally or via a terminal that they have the right to choose the currency in which the transaction will be completed.
- Each of the following is made clear to the Cardholder:
- Transaction amount in the local currency
- Transaction amount in the billing currency
- Currency conversion rate to be applied should the transaction be completed in the Cardholder’s billing currency.
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Where is the full document located?
It also says:
If a Cardholder complains that he/she was not given a choice in a DCC transaction, the Issuer has a chargeback right against the Acquirer
I have asked Monzo to do this.
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Saturday front-line Monzo support is as useful as I predicted:
“This is not something we have control over, it is a PayPal rule, as they have pointed out”
Hopefully will get a better response next week.
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That’s not correct. A merchant breached Mastercard rules. Point out where in the rules the merchant is in breach and state that you’d like to initiate a chargeback.
If it’s a no from Monzo at that point, you should be considering a complaint.
Just to check - you’ve complained to PayPal and didn’t get anywhere?
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I’ve pushed for a specialist to review it and the ticket has been re-assigned (I expect I’ll get an answer next week), but it does not surprise me. Generally the out of hours/front-line support just don’t have the knowledge that the support operatives used to all have when I signed up.
Yup. Usual outsourced support drone answer from PayPal live chat.
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Good luck. And yes, you’re right, sometimes first line support can’t know all the ins and outs. But I’m sure the specialists will resolve it.
I used to think so. My default options were set to let my debit card do the exchange for me rather than PayPal. Today, just ordering something from the US, it was using their own conversion by default. I noped out of that and found the option to pay in the local currency, thinking it would be cheaper. That was a mistake. PayPal would have been 7p cheaper than the current pending amount showing in my Monzo app. PayPal seems competitive now.
PayPal was £2 more for me (on a £50 transaction) when it forced DCC USD-GBP on me. That was a couple of weeks ago.
I think someone (who previously worked at Monzo) mentioned in another thread that there’s a specific chargeback reason for forced/unclear DCC, so this transaction should qualify? Looks like you’ve already done everything on your side (tried to resolve it with PayPal) without any success.
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