Currency converter

Which rate this is

The European Central Bank publishes one set of reference rates each working day, agreed with the other European central banks at about 14:15 Central European Time and published at around 16:00. That is the rate this page uses, and the date above the converter is the day those rates belong to — not the day you are reading.

On a Saturday, a Sunday or a public holiday there is no new set, so the most recent working day’s rates stand. The page says which day rather than calling them today’s.

What this rate is not

It is not a live market rate, and it is not the rate you will be given. The ECB describes these as reference rates for information and specifically discourages using them for transactions. A bank or a card network adds a spread, and a payment made on a Sunday will settle at something else again. Treat the figure here as the honest midpoint, not as a quote.

Thirty currencies are covered, which is what the ECB publishes. A currency that is not in the list above is not one we can convert. The rates are the ECB’s exactly as published: we do not adjust them and we do not add a margin of our own.

Why a converter disagrees with your bank

Almost every complaint about exchange rates comes down to comparing two different things. The reference rate is a midpoint between what buyers and sellers were asking. Nobody transacts at a midpoint — a bank quotes you a price to buy and a different price to sell, and the gap between them is where its margin lives.

On a major pair that spread is often one to three per cent, and on a card payment abroad it can be more once a foreign transaction fee is added on top. So a figure here that is a few per cent better than what you were charged is not an error in either number; it is the difference between a reference and a quote.

Dynamic currency conversion, and why to decline it

A card terminal or a website abroad sometimes offers to charge you in your own currency rather than the local one. It looks helpful and it is the one situation where declining is almost always right: the rate is set by the merchant’s payment processor rather than by your bank, and the margin is typically several per cent worse.

Choosing the local currency lets your own card network do the conversion at its rate, which is usually close to the reference rate plus a small spread. The wording varies — pay in EUR or pay in GBP, with a rate helpfully displayed — and the helpful display is the tell.

Historic rates, and why the date matters

For expenses, invoices and tax returns the question is usually not what a currency is worth now but what it was worth on a particular day. Tax authorities generally specify which source and which date to use, and many accept the central bank reference rate for the date of the transaction.

This page shows the most recent published set rather than an archive, so it answers today and not last March. Where a specific past date is needed, the ECB publishes its full history and that is the citable source — using a converter’s current figure for a transaction that happened months ago is the common and quietly wrong shortcut.

Rounding, and the cent that goes missing

Converting a list of amounts one at a time and adding them up gives a different total from converting the sum, because each individual conversion is rounded. On a hundred line items the discrepancy is small and it is real, and accounting software will notice it.

Which of the two is correct depends on the rule you are working under rather than on arithmetic. Invoices are normally converted per line and expenses per claim, so the answer is whichever your accountant or tax authority specifies — and the useful thing is knowing the two will not agree.

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