1. Low fees: We charge 0.6% for your transactions, while banks may charge 2.5% (or more) with other hidden fees that can add up along the way.

2. Transparent pricing: We use the live mid-market rate when converting your funds along with our 0.6% fee. There are no other hidden fees or spreads.

3. Security: PayTrie is FINTRAC regulated, meaning there are rules and regulations for us to operate as a legitimate service. You can be assured that your personal information will be protected, and your transactions are secure. (M19690633 — PayTrie AB Inc.)

 

Take a conversion of $25k USD to CAD as an example.

The market rate at the time of this writing (February 10) for USD to CAD is $1 USD = $1.3367 CAD. This is called the mid-market rate.

PayTrie pulls the mid-market rate from multiple sources. The screenshot above was taken from XE.com.

PayTrie’s market rate at the time of writing for USD to CAD is $1 USD = $1.33670 CAD. The slight difference between the XE.com rate and PayTrie’s rate is most likely due to the few seconds difference in taking the screenshot.

By processing your FX trade with PayTrie, you would send us the $25,000 USD. We would use the current FX rate of 1.33670 and take a 0.6% flat fee.

The final conversion is $25,000 USD = $33,217 CAD after all fees.

Many banks say that they don’t charge any fees. Technically, that is true. But many banks actually make money on the spread.

What’s a spread?

The spread is the difference between the buy rate and the sell rate. In the example below, BMO will buy USD from you for 1.2922, but sell USD to you for 1.3824 (screenshot taken on February 10th)

If we were to take the same $25,000 USD and convert it to CAD with the buy rate of 1.2922, you would end up with $32,205.

As you can see, given the mid-market rate of 1.3367 and the 1.2922 FX rate that’s being charged, the hidden “fee” is actually 3.33%.

In this example, you could be saving upwards of $912 by having our FX team help you with your conversion. Keep in mind that rates fluctuate and this is just one example in a snapshot in time.