Recommendations for International Payments

[CCAS]

For a small-dollar transaction, does anyone have a preferred money transfer app or method for a Canadian buyer to pay for an item from a US seller?  PayPal has been discussed but their online terms and conditions have a ton of fees and other variables that make it difficult to predict how much they'll scrape off the sales price.  

[Fly Boomer]

31 minutes ago, CCAS said:

For a small-dollar transaction, does anyone have a preferred money transfer app or method for a Canadian buyer to pay for an item from a US seller?  PayPal has been discussed but their online terms and conditions have a ton of fees and other variables that make it difficult to predict how much they'll scrape off the sales price.  

I think if you say the transaction is non-commercial, you pay a small fee, but nothing is "scraped off" what the recipient gets.

[buddy]

I’ve used Western Union to send money overseas and it works well.

[SoccerCA]

Fees are unavoidable in this situation, and PayPal's should be among the most favorable. Alternatively, the seller could list the item on eBay for the already agreed-upon price but then eBay will take a cut of its own. As long as buyer and seller trust each other I'd say use PayPal.

[AspiringOwner]

2 hours ago, CCAS said:

For a small-dollar transaction, does anyone have a preferred money transfer app or method for a Canadian buyer to pay for an item from a US seller?  PayPal has been discussed but their online terms and conditions have a ton of fees and other variables that make it difficult to predict how much they'll scrape off the sales price.  

I use Wise (www.wise.com) for cross-border payments. 

[Aerodon]

Paypal.  And if you are comfortable with the seller, use the 'no-protection option'.  If not, use the protection and suck up the fees, the buyer is getting the protection.

Side rant, it amazes me how some people get hung up on small charges in shipping, PayPal fees etc. when buying a nice new or used component typically at a bargain price.  Just look at the total and decide if its a deal you want to do or not.

 

Aerodon

 

 

[Slick Nick]

I was the other party involved with the transaction, and@CCAS has been great to deal with! 

For anyone else in the same boat in the future, we ended up using Wise. As the purchaser I found their fees to be quite steep compared to PayPal. They charged a currency conversion fee, and a fee for using my credit card. Totaling about $26USD for a roughly $200 purchase. I usually choose to bill my credit card in USD to avoid getting hosed on currency conversion, but they would not allow it in this instance, seemingly in order to collect a conversion fee. 

As the purchaser, it made no difference to me, as I was happy with the price I was paying for the goods involved (thanks again for the good deal @CCAS!) But it would be nice to have more of that money go into the pocket of the seller, vs. a third party company. 

[Pinecone]

I have sent money from the US to other country.  We used Revolut

IIRC there were no fees for the amounts I was sending.