It’s the layering of fees that is puzzling. Commission, conversion, withdrawal, and inactivity fees all working together. I 100% agree with the non-transparency of the fees on Paypal, which is compounded by the tiers that are used. Small vendors suffer the most … it’s really uncompetitive.
https://www.omniprofitcalculator.com/paypal-fee-calculator
There is typically a base fee 0.49c + a commission of between 2.99% and 3.49%. $10 purchase has nearly 8.4% cost. $100 is over 4%. This doesn’t include commission on conversion of 2.5% (but that rate goes to 4%). I’m not even sure that this is on base rate or on buy/sell rate. That $10 is now $8.80~8.90 or so.
But what you really need to watch out for is paypal’s DOUBLE conversion. For example, you see an item priced at US$10 but then you discover that it’s actually Canadian dollars. So it’s converted when it’s bought, then converted again. It happened to me once inadvertently as the item I purchased was advertised in dollars but it didn’t specify Canadian. Otherwise I might not have purchased it.
A bit shady. In fact, Paypal’s fees are all a bit shady; and it’s deliberately obfuscated the true cost of doing business there.