Freebag "beanbags" in the USA

[exMaggieDrum]

Originally Posted by Schooner Chandlery

Hi there, I contacted Stripe, the processing company we use for all transactions and asked about the charge since there can be a 2% fee if seller and buyer don't share the same currency. This is paid by the seller, not the buyer so we were perplexed. Stripe looked into our SC international transactions and came back with this info:


"we had a look into it and confirmed that the 2% is invisible to the end customer — we add it on when we convert the fees. So, if the customer was seeing an extra 2%, it's likely that it is in fact their bank adding an international fee or some equivalent. This type of fee is actually dependent on the user's bank/card."

So it seems this is a charge by your own bank. It seems very odd because Stripe (a USA company) has already done the currency conversion and charges your bank in dollars--therefore your bank has no international transaction to deal with. Because we were curious about this, we made several test purchases using our various bank's credit cards to try and re-create the fee you saw but could not do so -- our 2 banks and a credit union don't charge such a fee. The Stripe employee also reminded me that you may be seeing a $2 fee for using a debit card. This would also be an ordinary fee from your own bank, not our processing company, Stripe.

Thank you for alerting me to this issue and I'd appreciate it if you would PM me your order number or send the same in a support ticket in at Schooner Chandlery so we can track it down for certain. We can put a note to buyers into our Buyer Guidelines or the checkout process if we can ascertain what kind of fee you may be paying to your bank.

Fair winds

The $2 isn't a big deal but I'll look up the transaction and PM you. Thanks. My bank charged me so for some reason they thought it was justified. They may have made an error.

[Schooner Chandlery]

Originally Posted by exMaggieDrum

The $2 isn't a big deal but I'll look up the transaction and PM you. Thanks. My bank charged me so for some reason they thought it was justified. They may have made an error.

Thanks for your assistance. We selected Stripe as a payment processor so our customers wouldn't have to deal with add-on charges and in particular international fees. Stripe is a USA company (Wells Fargo backed) and takes on the exchange fees and so on so the customer isn't dealing with the international transaction. It may not seem like a big deal -- the $2, but for us we need to know it's happening and why so we can alert customers that their bank may make this kind of charge. Thanks again!

[exMaggieDrum]

I just sent a PM about this to you. My bank credit card company charged me the fee since they said the company which made the charge is in Norway and that is where they sent the money (in US$). It was not a currency exchange fee, it was a transaction fee. They did not see anything related to "Stripe" and the company which made the charge to me was noted as "Freebag AS" in Norway. FYI