Saturday, December 27, 2014

Tourists in Poland lose money accepting payments in Euro

Since my last post about "unfair" exchange rates offered by the Euronet ATMs,  most of the payment terminals in Poland introduced the possibility of payments in Euro as an alternative to payments in local currency Polish Zloty. The Polcard terminals are labeled with encouraging slogans such as;

“Card payment in your currency ! OK ?"
"Kartenzahlung in Euro ! OK ?"

I have also seen DCC logo standing for Dynamic Currency Conversion,  informing tourists about the possibility of payments in their own currency. It’ s all about the convenience of payments in the currency you are used to in your own country. Unfortunately this convenience, based on my analysis, can be very expensive. 

In general accepting offered exchange rates by the payment terminals or ATMs means losing money. I decided to do a little analysis and collected all my payment transactions from the 26th of December using different payment cards and ATM’s. My analysis still shows that the worst exchange rate is offered by Euronet.
On 26th of December the official bank exchange rate reported by the European Central Bank was;

1 EUR = 4,3078 PLN or 1 PLN = 0,2321 EURO

On that day I was offered by Euronet 3,9123 Polish Zloty for one Euro, exactly 9,5% less than the official exchange rate.

On the same day Bank PKO offered 4,168803 Polish Zloty for one Euro which was 3,24% less than the official exchange rate and 6,5% more than the Euro exchange rate offered by Euronet.

I made two transactions using the payment terminals. While paying 108 Zloty for delicious hot chocolate and deserts at Wedel I was offered 4,1698 Zloty for one Euro (0,2397902 Euro for one zloty)


This was not bad as it was very close to the exchange rate offered by the PKO BP. The other terminal did not offer any Euro payment options and  my own bank (ABN-AMRO)  applied the following Euro exchange rate: 4,2895 Zloty for one Euro ( 0,2331 Euro for 1 Zloty). This was 3% more than the Euro exchange rate offered by the payment terminal.



As a tourist in Poland you should absolutely avoid the Euronet ATM.  The question is how much you can actually lose withdrawing 2000 Polish Zloty at Euronet ATM in comparison with PKO BP ATM?

See below!




For 2000 Polish Zloty you would pay 31,49 EURO more using the Euronet exchange rate when compared to the PKO BP ATM and 40 Euro more than at the exchange office "kantor" at Hotel Metropol in Warsaw. 

The best option is to pay using your own bank card, as my ABN-AMRO Bank offered by far the best Euro exchange rates. Reject Euro payment options offered by payment terminals and trust your own bank exchange rates.