Guides
·
·
5 min read
How the mid-market rate works, and why weekends cost 0.35%
On weekdays you exchange at the midpoint between buying and selling. Where that rate comes from, and why we add 0.35% while markets are closed.
Marta Sousa
·
Head of Treasury
Most exchange fees are invisible. Ours are meant to be the opposite: one rate on weekdays, one small fee on weekends, and nothing hidden in between. Here’s how it works.
What “mid-market” means
Every currency pair has two prices at any moment: the price at which banks will buy and the price at which they’ll sell. The mid-market rate is the point exactly halfway between them. It’s the number you see when you search for an exchange rate, and it’s the one we use for every exchange on a weekday.
Many providers don’t show a fee at all. Instead they quote a rate a little worse than mid-market and keep the difference. On €1,000 changed into dollars, a 2.5% markup costs you €25, and it never appears on your statement.
Where our rate comes from
On weekdays we take live prices from several wholesale sources and recalculate the rate every few seconds. When you tap Exchange, the rate is held for 30 seconds, so the number you confirm is the number you get.
Weekdays, from Monday 00:00 to Friday 23:59 CET: the mid-market rate, with nothing added.
Weekends, from Saturday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59 CET: the last Friday rate, plus 0.35%.
Card payments abroad follow the same rules, with no extra card fee on any plan.
Why weekends are different
Currency markets close on Friday evening and reopen late on Sunday. While they’re closed there’s no live price, but you can still pay for dinner in Lisbon or a train in Zurich. We still have to cover that exchange, and on Monday morning the market can open somewhere quite different from where it closed.
The 0.35% covers that gap. It’s the same on every plan, and it’s shown on the confirmation screen before you exchange.
An example
Say you exchange €500 to pounds. On a Wednesday, at a mid-market rate of 0.8571, you get £428.55. On a Saturday the rate is 0.35% lower, at 0.8541, and you get £427.05. The difference is £1.50, and you see the amount you’ll receive before you tap Confirm.
How to avoid the weekend fee
If an exchange can wait until Monday, let it wait. Card payments are the exception: they’re exchanged when you pay, so a coffee on a Saturday uses the weekend rate. If you hold a balance in the local currency, the payment comes from that balance instead and isn’t exchanged at all.
That’s the whole system. Your statement shows the rate used for every exchange and, on weekends, the 0.35% as its own line, so you can check any of it later.
