Ryanair sterling exchange rate

a friend booked flight from UK to Ireland with Ryanair and the conversion rate from Stg to Euro was 136 whereas the current rate is around 127. Does the airline usually enjoy such a margin?

You should always use local currency with any operator. Anyone who offers to do the conversion for you generally charges a healthy margin on it.

Also, on currency conversions, there is a buy rate, and a sell rate. When a single rate is quoted like you have there, it'll be between the two. For example, right now, the single exchange rate is 1.27, but the sell rate for sterling to Euro is 1.31.

Ryanair charge in the currency of the country of origin of the flight (or the country of origin of the first leg of a return flight) - it's not possible to pay for a UK-Ireland one-way flight in euro. Ryanair charge in sterling and always do the conversion.

gipimann said:

Ryanair charge in the currency of the country of origin of the flight (or the country of origin of the first leg of a return flight) - it's not possible to pay for a UK-Ireland one-way flight in euro. Ryanair charge in sterling and always do the conversion.

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They also screw you on Dynamic Currency conversion too .. e.g. if you try to pay for an Ireland-Somewhere flight (priced obviously in €) with a UK credit card they will automatically convert this to Sterling (at a fairly awful rate) and don't give you the option to decline this. (People in the UK with zero foreign currency charge cards would of course want to )

This is a violation of Visa's policy on DCC , I have complained to Visa in the past about this .. but I don't think they give a toss (as I guess Ryanair is a pretty big merchant for them). The rules that Visa (and I think Mastercard) have on DCC are that the customer must be given the choice to pay in their home currency or the currency of the purchase - Ryanair don't do this. (Aer Lingus for example do).

As a general rule the rate you get on DCC conversions is a bit worse than just taking the charge in the foreign currency and letting your bank charge you (I think most Irish cards are 2.75-3% Forex loading) ... and with 0% forex loading cards (not sure there are any in Ireland, but they're easy to get in the UK) the rate is undoubtedly a lot worse so it's like Ryanair or another merchant imposing a 4 or 5% surcharge (on top of all the other surcharges)

On the Ryanair website, where you key in your credit card details, it will show you the price, in this example GBP as the flight is originating in the UK. When you key in your credit card number, Ryanair can tell if it is a Euro credit card. It so, then it shows you their euro equivalent. Next to this in red writing it says something like (More about this). Click on this and a box will pop up telling you the rate they are using for conversion and it recommends that you keep this 'guaranteed rate'. At the end of this is a tick-box which you can untick. You will then pay the Euro equivalent based on your Credit Card issuers rates rather than Ryanair's extortionate exchange rate.

I have done this a number of times and the difference is quite substantial.

jt_dublin said:

On the Ryanair website, where you key in your credit card details, it will show you the price, in this example GBP as the flight is originating in the UK. When you key in your credit card number, Ryanair can tell if it is a Euro credit card. It so, then it shows you their euro equivalent. Next to this in red writing it says something like (More about this). Click on this and a box will pop up telling you the rate they are using for conversion and it recommends that you keep this 'guaranteed rate'. At the end of this is a tick-box which you can untick. You will then pay the Euro equivalent based on your Credit Card issuers rates rather than Ryanair's extortionate exchange rate.

I have done this a number of times and the difference is quite substantial.

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This is good news - I wonder is this new (well new-ish it's probably a few years since I let them screw me over on this) .. I'm fairly sure they didn't offer this choice in the past