Originally Posted by
cbn42
... The proposal to have a "flat" fee for the conversion didn't make sense because no bank is going to be willing to exchange currency for a flat fee and no commission over interbank rates, since it would be rather unprofitable to do so.
I admit I did not take that post seriously because it would be inconceivable that it would ever happen. I'm sure you know all about that.
Even huge wholesale transactions are volume-sensitive, although the margins there are referred to in "pips". It is possible for consumers to get very fine foreign exchange rates, although one needs to know a fair amount to manage the process, and must have origin and destination accounts for the currencies to be used. The one I personally use is Oanda, but there are others. Oanda does explain the FX pricing pretty well IMHO.
http://fxtrade.oanda.com/learn/intro...nventions/pips