[LRUG] Receiving a one-off payment from the U.S.

[Damon Allen Davison]

On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Michael Pavling <pavling at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not necessarily. When sending money (as opposed to using Paypal to pay
> for goods on an online store) you can choose to send as a "gift" and
> the sender can include the fees so the recipient gets the bottom-line
> amount.

Yes, exactly. There are all sorts of ways the fee can be covered in
Paypal, and it can cost less than sending things via a normal bank,
although the converse is also possible.

More concretely, if someone sends money to from the US to the UK, they
might pay $25 (Bank of America) for an international transfer and then
your £9 fee (HSBC, IIRC) when it comes in; that's a total of about
£25. If they do it via Paypal, it costs 1% of the transaction, so if
the transaction is less than £2,500, Paypal is cheaper. YMMV.

Damon