--- title: "Comparing exchange rates" description: "Quote a currency leg and see how Qualy's rate stands against the other companies your customer could have used—before you commit to anything." lastModified: "2026-08-27" lang: "en" wordCount: 2224 url: https://qualyhq.com/training/payments/comparing-exchange-rates --- ## Site navigation - [For schools](/international-education/for-schools.md) — For international education schools - [For agents](/international-education/for-education-agents.md) — For international education agents - [Explore](/training.md) — Watch videos on how to use Qualy - [About](/about.md) — Learn about Qualy's mission and values - [Pricing](/pricing) - [5-min demo](/demo.md) - [Login](https://dashboard.qualyhq.com) # Comparing exchange rates > See what a currency leg costs, and how our rate ranks against the market. ## At a glance - **Intended for:** Everyone - **Available in:** All plans - **Reading time:** 5 minutes - **Last updated:** 8th August 2026 ## Quick summary Compare exchange rates quotes one currency leg and lays every provider side by side—Qualy's rate and the market's. You fix one side of the leg (what you send, or what they receive) and the table shows what each company would do with the other side, in money. The rate is indicative, not locked: it tells you where you stand today, not what a payout will settle at. Your customers see a shorter version of the same thing in the portal, which is why they sometimes ask about a rank they saw. ## Overview Compare exchange rates answers one question: for this currency leg, at this size, today, who is cheapest — and where do we sit among them? It quotes both Qualy's own rate and a set of well-known money-transfer companies, including ones Qualy has no relationship with, and puts them in one table sorted best-first. You get a rate, a rank, and the cost of the gap in money. What it is not is a commitment. The rate is indicative and the modal says so twice under the table. The rate that actually applies to money moving is locked later, when a converted payout is prepared. Keep those two apart and the tool is useful; blur them and you will end up explaining a discrepancy to a customer. ## Opening the comparison There are two ways in, and both need a role that can create or edit payments. From **Payments**, the group of buttons in the top right ends in a chevron. Open it and the Options list includes **Compare exchange rates**. ![The Payments page with the Options menu open, showing Start a new refund, Compare exchange rates and Simulate financing costs](/images/training/payments/comparing-exchange-rates/01-compare-exchange-rates-in-options-menu.png) The second entry is the quick actions bar, under the **Compare rates** group, which holds this tool and its sibling for financing. Where Compare exchange rates sits in that button group depends on your organisation's own currency. If you work in AUD, CAD, EUR or USD, direct debit takes the visible slot and the comparison moves into Options. Otherwise the comparison is promoted and direct debit moves down. Both are always reachable. ## Fixing one side of the leg The modal has two sides — **You send** and **They receive** — each with an amount and a currency. You only ever type into one of them. The side you type into is the side being held fixed, and it gets marked **exactly** in pink next to its label. The other side is filled in for you with what the quote came back with, and greys out slightly to show it's an answer rather than an input. ![The comparison anchored on You send, with A$5,000 fixed and each provider's delivery in the They receive column](/images/training/payments/comparing-exchange-rates/02-source-anchored-comparison.png) That choice changes what the table is for. Anchored on **You send**, you're asking who delivers the most for a fixed outlay. Anchored on **They receive**, you're asking who needs the least to deliver a fixed amount — which is the question you're actually asking when a school has invoiced a precise figure. ![The same comparison anchored on They receive, with the final column flipped to You send and the differences shown as amounts you'd have to add](/images/training/payments/comparing-exchange-rates/03-target-anchored-comparison.png) Watch the last column header when you switch: it flips between **They receive** and **You send** to match the side you didn't fix. The per-row differences flip with it. Anchored on send, a worse provider shows a negative figure — that's how much less would arrive. Anchored on receive, it shows a positive one — that's how much more you'd have to hand over. The arrows between the two sides do something different again: they swap the currencies themselves, so an AUD → BRL question becomes BRL → AUD. ### Reading the headline line Under the inputs, one line carries three facts: The rate itself, written as one unit of the send currency in the receive currency, to five decimal places. Then the rank — **Best of N compared** when Qualy is top of the table, **Ranked X of N compared** when it isn't. Then when the rates were last pulled. That timestamp matters more than it looks. It is the age of the whole comparison, and it is the thing that makes the rate indicative rather than binding. ## Reading the table Three columns, sorted best-first. **Provider** shows each company's logo, with Qualy's own row among them. When two providers tie exactly on rate, Qualy's row is placed first — because it's the one you can actually transact on here. **Effective rate** is the rate with fees folded in where the feed exposes them. It's the honest comparison number; the raw headline rate a provider advertises often isn't. The last column is the outcome, labelled with whichever side you didn't fix, and marked *(total before fees)*. The top row carries a green **Best rate** check. Every row below it shows its distance from that best row, in money rather than percentage points, so you can judge whether a gap of thirty cents on the rate is worth caring about at the size you're moving. A row may also carry a **Markup applied** badge under its rate. That means your organisation's markup is already inside the number shown, rather than the raw market rate. It's configured in Settings → Currency exchange, it's never itemised separately, and the person paying never sees it. The comparison prices a currency leg in isolation. It doesn't know about payment splits, gateway fees on the way in, or the rate that will be locked when a payout is actually prepared. If someone is trying to reconcile a specific amount that arrived, the comparison is the wrong document — the payout's currency-exchange timeline is, because it carries the locked rate and its own reference. ## What the customer sees Customers get a shorter, quieter version of the same idea, and it's worth knowing because they occasionally ask about it. On a payment that involved a conversion, the customer portal shows a small badge next to the amount reading **Converted from** the original currency, with how long ago the rate was taken. Opening it shows the **Exchange rate** for their payment, written the same way as in the dashboard. Below that, when more than one company was compared, they may see one of two things. If Qualy's rate was best, a green check and **Best rate available!** If it wasn't but still placed in the top three, **Close to the best rate**, the extra it cost them in red, and a line reading *This rate ranks #N out of M companies we compared with.* Outside the top three, that whole block is hidden — the customer sees the rate and nothing about ranking. The footer explains the method in the portal's own words: Qualy monitors exchange rates across a wide range of companies, including some it doesn't work with, to help find the cheapest option. The badge only exists on payments that were actually converted. A customer paying in the currency the payment was priced in has no quote behind their payment, so there's nothing to show. Your markup is never disclosed to them, in the badge or anywhere else. ## When the comparison looks wrong A few things routinely look like errors and aren't. **The provider count changed between two checks.** The comparison is drawn live from a public feed. A company that doesn't price your pair at that instant drops out of the response, so eight can become seven. The headline line always states the count the rank is out of. **Two providers show identical rates.** That happens, particularly on major corridors, and it's genuine rather than a display bug. The tie-break puts Qualy first. **A number you got yesterday doesn't reproduce today.** Expected. Nothing about the comparison is cached for you beyond the currency pair, amounts and anchor you last used — the rates themselves are pulled fresh every time. **The table is empty.** No provider in the feed priced that pair at that size. Try a rounder amount or a more common corridor to confirm, and if it persists on a pair you know Qualy supports, send it to support with the exact pair and amount. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is the rate in the comparison the rate I'll actually get? No. Compare exchange rates is indicative. It pulls provider rates from public feeds at the moment you ask, and the modal says so under the table. The rate you actually transact at is locked separately—when a converted payout is prepared—and it can be higher or lower by then. Use the comparison to decide whether a corridor is worth quoting, not to promise a customer a number. ### The customer paid one amount and we received less. Did the comparison lie? No, and this is the most common version of the question. Three separate things sit between what a customer pays and what lands in your account, and none of them is the comparison rate. First, the rate is locked when the payout is prepared, not when the customer paid or when you ran the comparison. Second, any splits to schools or partners come off before your share. Third, the comparison table shows totals before fees, as its own column header says. Open the payout's currency-exchange timeline—it carries the locked rate and its own reference—to trace a specific figure. ### Why isn't Qualy always the best rate in the list? Because the list includes companies we don't work with, and on any given day one of them may be pricing a corridor better than us. We show them anyway. The alternative—only listing providers that make us look good—would make the comparison useless to you. When Qualy isn't first, the row still shows exactly what the gap costs in money, so you can judge whether it matters at the size you're moving. ### What does 'exactly' next to You send or They receive mean? It marks the side of the leg you fixed. Type into You send and that amount is held while every provider is priced on what they'd deliver. Type into They receive and the delivery is held instead, and the table prices what each provider would need to be sent. The last column header flips to match, and the differences change sign: anchored on send, a worse provider delivers less; anchored on receive, a worse provider costs more to send. ### Which companies are in the comparison? A set of popular money-transfer providers pulled from a public comparison feed, plus Qualy's own quote. The exact list varies by corridor and by the moment—one check may return eight companies and the next seven, because a provider that doesn't price that pair right then drops out of the response. The count is stated in the headline line, so you always know how many the ranking is out of. ### What does the 'Markup applied' badge mean on a row? That the rate on that row already has your organisation's markup built into it, rather than being the raw market rate. The markup is inside the rate, never a separate line, and it's never shown to the person paying. If you want to change it, it lives in Settings → Currency exchange. ### Do customers see this comparison? They see a shorter version. On a payment that was converted, the customer portal shows a small badge reading 'Converted from' the original currency. Opening it reveals the exchange rate, and—when more than one company was compared and Qualy's rate landed in the top three—either 'Best rate available!' or 'Close to the best rate' with the extra cost and a line reading 'This rate ranks #N out of M companies we compared with.' Customers never see your markup, and they never see the full provider table. ### A customer asked about a rank they saw. Where did that come from? From the rate badge on their payment in the customer portal. It only appears on payments that involved a currency conversion, and the ranking line only appears when Qualy's rate placed in the top three of the companies compared for that payment. Below it the portal explains the method—Qualy monitors rates across a range of companies, including ones it doesn't work with. The number they saw is a snapshot from when their payment was quoted, not a live figure. ### Can I compare a corridor without creating a payment? Yes. Compare exchange rates is a standalone tool—opening it, typing amounts and swapping direction creates nothing and charges nothing. It also remembers the last pair, amounts and anchor you used, so reopening it picks up where you left off. ### Who in my team can open it? Anyone whose role lets them create or edit payments. The same permission gates both entries—the Options menu on the Payments page and the Compare group in the quick actions bar—so a user who can't raise a payment won't see either. ### What does 'total before fees' mean under the last column? That the amount in that column is the result of applying the rate, before any provider's own transfer fee is taken off. Providers charge fees differently, and some bury them in the rate, which is why the Effective rate column exists alongside—it already folds fees into the rate where the feed exposes them. Read the two together rather than either alone. ## Prefer doing this via the Qualy API? Head over to our developer docs for everything you need—endpoints, examples, and simple how-tos. 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