International payments in złoty

I'm from The Netherlands. What is the most cost-effective way to pay a large amount in Polish złoty (PLN)?

Last updated: Dec. 2021.

What is the 'basic' exchange rate?

There is such a thing as a 'basic' or 'actual' exchange rate. It is what you see e.g., on Google. In december 2021, this is about 4,61. PLN is slowly getting weaker in view of the euro, but not to such a degree that the exchange rate changes from month-to-month at only one or two decimals.

For some kinds of transactions (like using an ATM abroad), Rabobank refers to this 'basic' exchange rate plus a koersopslag - exchange rate markup en sometimes a fixed cost. For other kinds of transactions (like making a payment to a Polish złoty account), this is not used.

Payment from a Dutch euro account to a Polish złoty account

Information Rabobank

• When I pay in euro, the receiving bank will do the conversion: muntsoortconversie. This will be a SEPA payment. Nevertheless, the Rabobank site seems to suggest that they do the conversion - That doesn't seem to be the case, or maybe the context is different
• There seem to be possibilities to do conversion before payment. For this, I would have to contact the Rabobank. This would make the transfer a wereldbetaling. For these, higher costs are calculated (offset by a better exchange rate, I presume).

Example R. - 2021.12.10

The receiving party send me this - Very helpful!

I payed from my Dutch Rabobank account to a Polish Alior Bank account:

• The receiving bank determins the exchange rate (you can't actually see that here, but trust me)
• Alior exchange rate: 4,402800. This is 4,56% worse (koersopslag - exchange rate markup) than the official exchange rate of 4,61. On a transfer amount of € 40,000, this is a difference of € 1,800
• No offset (or fixed cost) seemed to have been applied. Maybe such a cost would show up in the monthly costs of the bank, but I have the impression that it doesn't play much of a role
• You can check that there is no additional costs here: € 87,18*4,4028 = 383,84 zł.

Example E. - 2021.12.10

• I payed € 3,778 from my Rabobank account
• E. received 16,690.45 zł
• I don't know what bank the receiving party uses. The mutation in my banking app didn't contain any usefull additional information.
• Appearantly, the exchange rate was 4,4178. That's 3% better than at the previous transaction and 4,2% worse (koersopslag - exchange rate markup) than the official exchange rate

Receiving payments in złoty

When I contacting the Rababank about this, it turned out they mostly informed me about the opposite transaction: When someone in Poland pays me in złoty to my Dutch euro account.

PIN-terminals & ATMs

On their site, Rabobank claims that they determine the exchange rate for various kinds of transactions. I'm not so sure about the extend of this statement, but it does seem to be true concerning PIN-terminal payments and taking cash from an ATM.

Sometimes, these machines offer me to do the exchange for me, rather than by my own bank. I feel this is a scam, as they offer a really bad exchange rate (like 2.2 PLN for a euro - That's about 50% worse than the official rate)

Example: Bookstore 2021.12.16

Nice & clear example of a transaction using my debit card

What this says:

• Official exchange rate: 4,612162
• Original amount: 102,39 zł
• Payed amount: € 22,47
• Koersopslag - exchange rate markup: 1,20%
• Effective exchange rate: 4,556816056
• Effective converted amount: 102,39 zł
• Cost koersopslag - exchange rate markup: 1,23 zł
• Cost koersopslag - exchange rate markup: € 0,27.

So this is all quite intuitive and as expected. Also, note that the exchange rate is much better, compaired to the exchange rate that I get from Polish banks when doing a bank transfer to a Polish account.