Hello,
I would like to become an “associate member” of the OSMF and have questions about the payment of the membership fee, because I live in Germany.
How high are the fees including currency exchange for the particular payment methods PayPal and SEPA transfer for OSMF and me?
Many thanks in advance for all the helpful answers!
With kind regards
Hi
There is no fee for you usually on paypal. SEPA depends on your bank, please ask them. On the OSMF side there is a fee of a few % for paypal, which is documented on their web page. The bank charges are rather difficult to predict and are not as well documented.
Regarding currency exchange, for SEPA you will have to ask your bank. For paypal it depends, you could ask your credit card issuer. Alternatively I believe paypal offers to do the conversion, which is displayed when processing the payment.
kind regards
Michael
Membership Working Group
Dear datendelphin, thank you very much for your answer!
Yes, PayPal shows the exchange rate.
I tried a donation with £15 on PayPal to see what the exchange rate is. (This should be the same as if I would pay the membership fee!?)
I would have to pay 17,57€ what is actually £15,60 according to the current exchange rate, so I have to pay 0,68€ more to PayPal because of the currency exchange.
OSMF must pay to PayPal again.
Could you please tell me what exactly OSMF has to pay to PayPal, because I don’t know which fees count for OSMF? (For an Associate member who has fully paid in euro by PayPal balance or bank account from Germany.)
Do you have to pay (in this case) 2% (https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/cross-border-and-conversion-fees#currencyconversion)?
Please excuse me, for me the documentation of PayPal is confusing and complicated. 
According to Regulation No 924/2009 bank charges of SEPA transfers in every SEPA country must be treated same as a normal transfer.
See https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/retpaym/undpaym/legasp/html/index.en.html:
Even though some banks charge fees for national transfers, at my bank this is (still) free of charge. This means that a SEPA transfer does not cost me anything, in contrast to the very expensive International bank transfers.
No, the meaning of the SEPA transfer is, that it can only be processed in Euro, which means that no currency exchange fees accrue!
see https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/retpaym/undpaym/qa/html/index.en.html:
That are the reasons why I want to pay with SEPA.
First I don’t have to pay bank (transfer) charges,
furthermore no exchange fees (no exchange-related losses),
moreover OSMF doesn’t have to pay bank transfer charges because of SEPA (depends on your bank, so I still don’t know).
And the euro is currently the more stable currency, also with regard to the BREXIT.
I hope that my citation method is correct.
Thanks you in advance!
Kind regards
Chegtx
/update:spelling mistake
Hi
Yes currency conversion isn’t free. You might get a better rate with a credit card if you have one.
If we assume that the payment originates from Germany, then I read the table to say (destination UK, sender Europe I) that paypal charges the OSMF 0.5% if it is from a bank account, and 3.9% + 0.2£ if you pay by credit card.
I didn’t know about those SEPA rules. Indeed unfortunate that it does not apply to pounds.
I agree that it would be advantageous to have the possibilities you outline, unfortunately we are currently not able to provide those options. For completeness, I would like to mention that it is possible to donate to the OSMF through the German FOSSGIS in Euros.
That is the answer I can offer from the OSMF perspective. Now I would like to offer my personal opinion. The following does not reflect the opinion of the OSMF or the Membership Working Group, but is my personal opinion:
You should see all this in a bit more perspective. To be blunt, to haggle about these few % that you and the OSMF are charged for the transfer is a first world problem. We try to enable people from all over the world to become members of the OSMF. And there are many regions where it is virtually impossible to transfer the membership fee, if the people can afford it. Even if you just go to some eastern European states, the bank fees can be as high as the membership fee itself. Now imagine you live in Africa, and it gets even harder. There are not many banks even willing to to work with such transactions, because receiving money from all kinds of states raises many red flags, where the bank has to look more closely and that costs the banks, so our options are severely limited. We will always try to improve, but please be patient if we focus on the third world first, where the situation is much worse.
Michael
First, I’d like to apologize!
I didn’t mean it badly at all, but I also thought about which payment method the OSMF would get more money and could therefore invest more, ….
I thought that if you also accept donations via SEPA transfer in Euro, I can also pay the membership fee via SEPA transfer.
At my other topic (post #11) Nakaner wrote that he also pays his membership fee by SEPA bank transfer and that this is best for OSMF after verbal statement of someone, because OSMF does not incur any costs and the euro is also more stable than the pound.
I understand, of course, that OSMF has other priorities, but OSMF is already offering SEPA donations, and therefore it would not make any funds/additional expenditure (to set it up because it already exists) if the membership fee were transferred there. And the OSMF would then have more money to continue working on problems in “third world”.
Thanks you in advance!
Kind regards
Chegtx
No need to apologize. I can understand your priorities, I just wanted to convey mine 
I spoke to Nakaner and our treasurer. We agreed that it does not matter which account it lands on. It is a manual process anyway. So go ahead and pay to the Euro account (the same as for donations). Just make sure that it converts to at least 15 pounds.
Dear datendelphin,
Okay, that are great news :)!
I will become in a little while an associate member.
As I said (or at least meant ;)), I have no problem to transfer more to the SEPA euro account, if that comes directly to OSMF (and not to a other party which I don’t want to support).
I would transfer 18€ which are at the moment £15.85.
Or is it undercharged because of your exchange rate?
As reference I will put “membership fee: Chegtx”.
Regardless, I apologise myself once again for your effort, time and circumstances and thank you very much!
Kind regards
Chegtx