EFT currency conversion

adsense conversion rate is almost 1% off

[mifi601]

When they announced EFT payments in Europe as well as the US I was happy.

Now I see that the actual conversion rate, in comparison with a regular ATM withdrawal from a US bank in Europe, is not really that hot.

On the contrary: I withdrew money on the same day that g supposedly made the exchange and the rate was almost 1% worse than that given by the ATM, including the 'non myownbank withdrawal fee' - which of course squews the results depending on how much you withdraw.

1% is a pretty big margin if you apply it to thousands of publishers ...

Google is losing face big time - in my view.

[hyperkik]

Google has traditionally paid publishers through a third party vendor. It is possible that the vendor is capitalizing on conversion rates so as to maximize its profits - if it skims 1% off of the payments to all foreign clients, it profits handsomely.

[jomaxx]

There are 1 or 2 threads already in which people discuss the exchange rate used. Most people report it as being pretty good.

[david_uk]

I track the exchange rate through Yahoo Messenger, and I have to say that the exchange rate I got from Google was very close to that. I also saved the £10.50 fee for daring to pay foreign cheques into my account, AND quite a few ££ that the bank always seem to gain by giving me a really cruddy exchange rate on the deal.

All in all, even if G *do* cream off some commission (and for the first month that isn't true), it's an awful lot less that what my UK bank would have done. In addition I save parking charges whilst visiting the bank, and the inconvenience factor of having to visit the bank in the first place - especially as they are only open whilst I'm at work.

It's working great for me :) :)

[mifi601]

Well I was comparing the exchange rate to an Austrian ATM withdrawal from a US account, where I used to deposit my US$ denominated checks as opposed to having the money deposited directly into the Austrian account.

Depositing a US$ check into a Euro account is prohibitvely expensive - any check is.

The reason I started a new thread was to compare it to the way I used to get to the $$ rather than a straight exchange rate, which in and of itself is not very meaningful, as parking fees, etc come into play :)