Requesting Money through PayPal to buy in Ikea Belfast

cormie

Hi there,
As part of my Ikea shop and deliver service, I want to request money through paypal from customers.

The process is that the customer looks up Ikea website, gets total cost of items in GBP, tells me total, I convert to EURO, estimate minimum number of trolleys required and send invoice for goods in EURO plus delivery.

The problem with this is that the customer may send payment days before I actually go up to collect their items, in which time currency rates could fluctuate meaning the EURO conversion from days ago is off.

My PayPal account is in Euro, my bank account is in Euro and the delivery fee is charged in Euro.

Is there any way I can be sure I'm getting the right amount in GBP to pay for the items on the day I go up? There also seems to be no way to check the sterling amount charged on my card before delivering to the customer as it doesn't show up for a few days after I purchase in Ikea.

This is a relatively new service so I'd appreciate any advice on the best way to go about it

randombar

I like the idea and best of luck with it, might take advantage next year.

Just had an idea there about the whole thing.

I would charge everything in sterling (fixed prices etc) and then give rough estimates of prices in euro online (you could maybe link with xe .com or something?)

I would set up a bank account in the north (if you can???) and use the paypal via this account.

Then you're basically dealing totally with sterling and letting the customer work out the exchange rate.

forbairt

My advice would be to look into setting up a UK bank account and paypal account as I believe the money will always be converted to euros ? which will leave you potentially screwed.

watty

OScommerce lets you manually set rates after an automatic update. It's normal to add a small percentage for cost of conversion and fluctuation and only change rates less often. Though easons and play.com seem to use a rather large percentage.

cormie

Thanks for the feedback and good wishes

Hmm, so you're saying to just set up a NI bank account and charge say £45 per trolley.

Is it possible for non residents to of NI to set up a GBP bank account there I wonder? Also, what would happen if a customer didn't want to pay through paypal and preferred to pay direct to my bank account. Could they just go into a bank here and say "I want £143 to show up in this account" and then it would?

Could get a bit messy?

EDIT: Just saw your reply now Watty, what exactly is OScommerce?

aidan_walsh

http://www.oscommerce.com/about

forbairt

Not sure about how difficult it'd be to set up a UK / NI bank account

Hmm think as Watty said .. your easiest and best bet might be to add in a margin of error though if the items are going to be costing a lot it might be taking a bit of the competitive edge out of things for you also you're already losing the few % on the paypal transactions

My advice would be to steer clear of OSCommerce steaming pile of ...
(its spiraled out of control with plugins and hacky code)

cormie

Thanks for the link. I had a quick look but I'm not sure if it would be suitable as I'm not actually selling anything myself other than the service so I can't set prices of combinations of things, as they all have to be calculated on Ikeas own site.

EDIT: just saw your reply forbairt, that's true about the margin taking the competitive edge off my service. For paypal payments, I've to already add on the 3.4% charge to the invoice, I know most stores would waiver this as the more people buy, the more profit they are making so can allow for a 3.4% charge, but because I'm not actually selling anything but a delivery service, I could still be making the same €50 on trolley filled with £1,000 worth of goods as one filled with £100 worth of goods, the 3.4% of the £1,000 trolley would be about €40, leaving me at a huge loss!

the_syco

GaryCocs wrote: »

you could maybe link with xe .com or something?

Don't use xe.com as the rates there are very good, but not what you'd usually get in a bank, thus you'd get people complaining that you're taking too much.

cormie

Another option is that Ikea themselves also accept payment in Euro going by what the bbc rate is and when the rate changes in the banks, it does with Ikea too I was just told.

So I could just ask them to charge me in Euro, this way I would know the exact price being debited from my account in Euro and be able to collect/refund the difference upon delivery. Think that might be the best option.

Would I be paying more in Euro in Ikea, than if I paid in Sterling and let the bank take care of the exchange rate though I wonder?

CoNfOuNd

If someone places an order with you, can't you immediately purchase the stuff from IKEA online so you get it at the current exchange rate, and have IKEA keep it for you to collect? Do they offer that service?

You shouldn't have any problem opening a bank account. Just stop in Newry or Belfast and bring the usual proof of address + ID as normal. If you go with Ulster Bank then you can go to a branch anywhere in Ireland to put money in, but you'll need to go to a branch in the North to withdraw funds.

You will need a separate PayPal account too, as I think an Irish PayPal account won't let you add UK credit cards or bank accounts. You may need a UK address for PayPal.

cormie

Unfortunately Ikea don't allow you to order online and collect later. I think the best thing to do is just pay in Euro when I get up there at the moment. This way I'll know the exact charge before I pay it compared to the rate deposited so will know what's owed or what I owe when I deliver later that day.

That's all well and good for Ikea, but if Ikea didn't accept Euro payment, it'd be necessary to open a UK account I guess.

mneylon

If you have business bank account you can get a Sterling a/c as well - no need to worry about banks in the North etc.,

As far as Paypal is concerned, you can set your account to be multicurrency, so all you have to do is change the EUR to GDP in your code (I think it's GDP, but you can probably check that)

Don't forget to factor in your PayPal processing fees, as they can be quite high unless your volume is over a certain level

HTH

Michele

cormie

Thanks Michelle, yeah paypal fees are 3.4% at the moment, I just add this into the "tax" column on the invoice and explain this to customers and tell them before that they can either deposit with no extra charge direct to my bank, or with 3.4% of total on top with paypal.

I must ask about getting a sterling account next time I'm in with the bank but I would have liked to have done it some way that I could use my Halifax debit card and account for the lot.

cormie

I set up paypal anyway, but so far, 2/3 customers haven't been able to use their cards on the "don't have a paypal account?" continue link. One customer tried 3 different cards, all cards registered in the US, and another customer today tried her card and it wouldn't accept it either but she used that very card to book a flight just this morning

Any feedback appreciated

CoNfOuNd

Michele > GDP is Gross Domestic Product. The code for sterling would be GBP, as in Great Britain Pound...

cormie > I'm not sure but it could possibly be PayPal fraud detection? A US card being entered with an Irish address or Irish IP?

cormie

Possibly the case with the US cards, but the Irish cardholder, using an Irish card (I assume) with an Irish billing address, at first I thought it may have been a problem with her card but when she said she booked a flight just this morning that meant out of 5 cards tried, only 1 worked

Would there be any other way I can accept money from this ladies credit card, once off, without paypal I wonder?