I have $1000 Canadian dollars that I want to convert into euros. Which is the cheapest way to do this – PayPal or Revolut?

PayPal's currency conversion service

PayPal has its own currency conversion service. However, the amount it charges for this service is seldom clear.

To find out PayPal's currency conversion charge, we first have to find the baseline. Googling "1000 CAD to EUR" reveals that the CAD$1000 I have is worth €670.15. That's a conversion rate of 1 CAD = 0.6702.

By logging into my PayPal account and trying to convert my CAD $1000 to euros, I can see that PayPal's conversion rate today is 1 CAD = 0.6494 EUR.

This means if I let PayPal do the conversion, I'd get €649.44, so I'm losing €20.71. You might not think that's a lot, but PayPal pisses me off so I want to see if there's a better way.

Revolut

I've found another place to convert money: a UK bank called Revolut. You can open an account online and do all your banking with them through an app.

By logging into Revolut on my phone, I can see that their rate today is 1 CAD = €0.6701. That's better than PayPal's.

So which is cheaper: PayPal or Revolut?

Let's compare the rates from above.

Interbank rate: 1 CAD = €0.6702

PayPal rate: 1 CAD = €0.6494

Revolut rate: 1 CAD = €0.6701

Revolut's rate is better than PayPal's rate because it's much closer to the interbank exchange rate. So Revolut is cheaper. Basically, if I exchanged my CAD$1000 with Revolut instead of PayPal, I'd be saving around €20.

So that should be it, right? Well, no, because actually getting your Canadian dollars into Revolut is more difficult than it first seems. I'll look at this issue in my next post.