Lay My Hat

Can anyone help with this please? We advertise on Owners Direct and a German family have booked our apartment for a month in May. However the booking fee OD charge would be over £100 and we have said they can pay us direct to save that cost.

However we cannot find an easy way for them to pay without incurring large charges eg £100 for PayPal, 30p per £10 bank to bank. Although our rates are in pounds we would allow them to pay the full balance in euros when they arrive but then we are not sure how you set the exchange rate ie what day do you choose? what exchange rate do you use?

I am sure this is something many of you have come across and I would be interested in finding the best way to do it so neither party lose out.

This is a one off as most of our guests come from the UK so pay in pounds via bank transfer or are not booking for so long so the commission is not so noticeable.

Thank you in advance.

Use Transferwise. They are the cheapest and the costs are minimal.

Hi Julie, we have a French bank a/c so not a problem for us, but for other currencies I have used Money Transfer in the past. The guest has to register with them but it hasn't been a problem. Then I use xe.com to work out the exchange rate. Hope that helps.

If you and the other party can agree on it, use the Transferwise exchange rate on the day of actual payment. Transferwise have a little app. to work this out, on their website. It is useful for all sorts of transactions when a change in currency is required.

Another vote here for Transferwise if there's currency exchanges involved. I've also set up Credit Card payment with Wave Apps for a lot less than PP usually charges/ Not all Germans have cards though. I think once you have set up the account though you can also add other methods of payment through the Stripe dashboard which includes something Germans can use.

Hi

Agree with some others - use Transferwise
login in and create new Money request, enter currency and amount.
A http link is then generated - paste in an email and send to your customer. Usually they have 24 hours to make the payment before the request expires.

Its also very good for £ to £ payments in the UK - although not advertised by themselves.
All money request incur a handling fee by Transferwise - this is added to the sum of the requested money but is minimal considering the simplicity & convenience of the process.

Thanks for the ideas. I am going to go with Transferwise.

Julie123 wrote:I am going to go with Transferwise.

+1 gets my vote.

beamish wrote:Hi

Agree with some others - use Transferwise
login in and create new Money request, enter currency and amount.
A http link is then generated - paste in an email and send to your customer. Usually they have 24 hours to make the payment before the request expires.

Its also very good for £ to £ payments in the UK - although not advertised by themselves.
All money request incur a handling fee by Transferwise - this is added to the sum of the requested money but is minimal considering the simplicity & convenience of the process.

I also am trying to work out an easy way for Germans to make payments as I am trying to attract more bookings from them. I price in pounds, but with the money request, I assume for a German guest the currency would be Euros, and you work out the amount using the current exchange rate? And the guest is then given the details to make the payment by bank transfer to your Transferwise account? Thanks

Can you open a Euro account with your UK bank? We have one with Barclays, albeit we have a sterling business account with them too. When we sold our villa recently it saved us a huge amount on exchange, even on a quote from Transferwise. I realise that your property's in Cornwall, but if you are looking to encourage more 'Euro-peans' it may be worth considering ?

Jenster,
When you use Transferwise, you just enter the amount of money in GBP that you are requesting, you don't work out any amounts in Euros.

If you price in GBP on your website, and state guests are responsible for the charges in converting currency, your overseas customers should have a good idea of what the amount is in Euros, but then they will be pleased not to pay so much in costs.
You just cut and past a link into an email for your guests and they click on the link to make the payment. Very user friendly, even if you don't use it very often.

I am curious about the comment from Beamish to say Transferwise will also do £ to £ payments in the U.K. I didn't know this, what are the charges for the guests please ( any any charges to me?)
Is this a suitably alternative way of accepting card payments ???

Hi
I had a guest from Finland who wanted to pay in Euros

I ended up using the normal Wave / Stripe credit card payment process , I sent the "invoice" in UK pounds , the guest used his Euro credit card and it all worked fine , much to my surprise!

Larry

VillaAntonioLanzarote wrote:Hi
I had a guest from Finland who wanted to pay in Euros

I ended up using the normal Wave / Stripe credit card payment process , I sent the "invoice" in UK pounds , the guest used his Euro credit card and it all worked fine , much to my surprise!

Larry

Hmm does this cost the guest more in credit card charges? Is it also cheaper to go through Transferwise for cc payments in different currencies?

Hi
The guest did not incur any charges beyond what his card provider would charge if he was visiting the UK and using his credit card

Plus the guest was "happy" he could use his credit card for payment

Larry

No but i'm wondering if transfer wise payment in Euros would be cheaper than than the guests credit card charge for paying in pounds? You can also pay by credit card through transfer wise, but in your own currency, so no cc fees, just a small transfer wise fee for the service.