Payment Paypal default currency

My account has both currencies, $ and €. It allowed me to get payments in USD that stays in USD, and to avoid conversion from euros to USD when I can avoid it. But Paypal will still applies their conversion rate if they need to take euros for USD on you bank account, if I say no mistake.
Maybe it will be different if you have USD as primary currency? Maybe someone more familiar with the intricacies of paypal will be able to give you a better answer than me.

 

I think unless you're funding your account with a card or bank account that has USD, it will probably still charge you a conversion fee even if you set your primary currency to USD.

 

@lutke a bit late on this, but I am in the US, and have used PayPal extensively and am familiar with their practices. If you are paying in a currency using your bank account, debit, or credit cards, the default settings are going to be in PayPal's conversion rate in your region's currency.

To avoid paying their conversion rates, you can swap the settings on PayPal when paying with a card to pay with your card provider's rates. PayPal will promote their rate as a "safe, locked in" type of rate when you try to swap off. Your card provider will typically have foreign transaction fees, but to avoid this, I have credit cards that waive these fees, meaning, I can pay in foreign currency without paying an additional conversion fee. I highly recommend people who purchase in foreign currency regularly look into a card that offers this benefit. The rate they use is issued by the card provider, and you can look up daily rates on Visa/Mastercard's site. It is fair with consideration to daily market rates. (Note: this also depends on the agreements PayPal has with card providers. If the option is not there, then there probably is an agreement in place with PayPal where you cannot pay with the card issuer rate -- such as Discover in the US.)

I have paid dollmakers like Lillycat and Merrydollround in euro through PayPal but just changed the currency conversion before submitting payments.

I actually think PayPal got sued or something which made it less esoteric to pay with card issuer rates. Before, it was buried and hidden in the weirdest menus under recurring established payments (literally made no sense). Here are screencaps with changing the settings for the card conversion: imgur.com

 

@lutke You're very welcome! Glad it can help you save some a bit more in the future.
Unfortunately, a drawback with PayPal is its ease of use coming at the cost where they definitely try to skim off the top whenever they can.