Understanding exchange rates
Short, jargon-free explanations of what sets an exchange rate, what your bank actually charges, and how to convert without getting it wrong.
The mid-market rate, and why nobody gives it to you
The mid-market rate is the midpoint between the price at which a currency is bought and the price at which it is sold on the wholesale market. It is the fairest single reference figure for a currency pair, and it is not a rate a bank, a card or a bureau will hand you: every provider adds a margin to it, which is why no two quotes match.
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How to pay abroad without losing money on the exchange rate
Paying in the local currency, with a card whose foreign transaction terms you have checked, is usually the cheapest way to spend abroad. The two decisions that cost travellers most are accepting dynamic currency conversion, which is being charged in your home currency at a foreign terminal, and changing money at an airport.
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How a currency converter works with no internet connection
An offline currency converter works by storing the last exchange rates it downloaded and doing the arithmetic on the device. That makes it exactly as accurate as its last sync, which for a major pair is normally a fraction of a percent after a day, and not accurate enough for a large transfer.
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How to read an exchange rate chart without over-reading it
An exchange rate chart tells you where a pair sits relative to its recent range, and very little else. Most of what looks dramatic on a one-week chart is ordinary noise amplified by an axis scaled to fit the data, and a single day's move in a major pair is almost never a signal.
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Currency codes explained: how USD, JPY and XOF are built
A currency code is the three-letter identifier defined by the ISO 4217 standard: the first two letters are normally the country's two-letter code and the third is the initial of the currency, so US plus dollar gives USD. Codes beginning with X are reserved for currencies and units that belong to no single country, including the CFA francs XOF and XAF.
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