Effective from September, Skrill is switching from one card processor to another and below changes will apply:
- Card currency: new Skrill Card – EUR only (old Skrill Card currencies USD, GBP, PLN no longer supported)
- Re-carding (the process of replacement of expired cards): the renewal of the cards has a new design
Skrill Card currency
Please note that as of September the renewals of the expired Skrill MasterCards as well as the new applications that enter, are being issued in EUR only. USD, GBP, PLN are no longer available currencies for the card. Instead, EUR has been set as the default currency.
However, as long as the currency of the withdrawal/POS payment that the customer executes with his card matches the currency of the wallet – no FX fee will be applied regardless of the fact that the card currency is different. Respectively, if the currency of the withdrawal/ POS payment differs one of the Skrill wallet, a fee of 3.99% will be applied. In such a case, customers will pay just once the 3.99% FX fee.
In short:
Old card: FX 3.99% applies whenever Wallet Currency ≠ Card currency ≠ Transaction currency
New card: FX 3.99% applies when Wallet currency ≠ Transaction currency (Independently from Card currency)
Example scenarios:
GBP wallet -> EUR card -> customer uses the card for payment on a POS terminal in London (payment is in GBP) -> no FX will be applied
GBP wallet -> EUR card -> customer uses the card for an ATM withdrawal in Berlin, e.g. local currency EUR -> 3.99% FX fee will be applied as the currency of the account does not match the currency of the withdrawal
USD wallet -> EUR card -> customer uses the card for payment on a POS terminal in Warsaw where the local currency is PLN -> only once 3.99% FX fee will be applied as the currency of the account does not match the currency of the purchase (with old card would be 2 currency conversions).
A hint that would avoid the 3.99% FX for customers out of the EUR zone and their wallet currency matches the currency of the merchant terminal, would be to always choose the original currency of the purchase, instead of EUR. This way if a client has an account from Czech Republic in CZK (supported by Skrill currency) and has the prepaid card in EUR, when he initiates a purchase payment with the card and if the merchant offers him the option to choose the currency of the payment, the client has to choose CZK, instead of EUR.
