Payment for tour company in Italy

A 6% fee on an amount that large seems like highway robbery. A number of people on this forum (not I) have used Wise (formerly Transferwise) to pay traffic fines, apartment rentals and the like. They have reported the fees are very reasonable. I'd check that out first.

Your bank can tell you what its daily limit on ATM withdrawals is; I'd expect it to be less than 770 euros, but you never know. If you have to make withdrawals over two days, I trust you'll have a money belt or something like that for security.

Individual ATMs also have transaction limits that will probably be under 770 euros. You can get around that by going to multiple ATMs (or perhaps even making two or three withdrawals from the same ATM--I've never needed much money at one time). The problem is that you may be charged a flat-rate ATM-usage fee on each withdrawal.

Be sure you conduct any ATM transaction or PayPal payment in euros rather than agreeing to some sort of upfront euros-to-dollars conversion rate. Those rates are never in the customer's favor.

SIX percent!?!? That's nearly half a hundred.

Highway robbery. (oh that's been used) Taking the *iss!!!

Just my opinion....

Any advice?

Probably too late, but find another vendor with a more customer friendly payment policy?

Who is the vendor? Always good to know who to avoid.

Look at it this way: the business has to pay a fee to the credit card company, and probably to PayPal as well. When I owned a small business years ago, Visa charged a fee of 3% on all the credit card charge slips I deposited. That was 3% right off the top. It is probably the same fee now, or higher. M Businesses that do a huge volume, like grocery stores, etc., negotiate a lower fee, but small businesses have no choice. And AmEx charges. Higher fee, which is why lots of small businesses will not take that card (neither will Costco).

When I was making hotel reservations for our recent trip to Italy , I found a couple of hotels that offered a discount for payment in cash at checkout—8% was the discount. So of course we did. Ut the amount was only 300€ and we could withdraw that in one trip to the ATM.

A discount for paying cash is just the flip side of charging a fee for using a credit card. 6% is a bit high—-it is likely more than they are actually paying to Visa and Mastercard, but it is not “highway robbery”.

I detest (and distrust) PayPal so in your case I would just choose the cash option. But you likely will have to spread the ATM withdrawals over 2 days or more, depending on your card’s daily limit. And remember that your bank’s daily limit may be midnight-to-midnight at the bank’s home location in the US, not where the ATM is located in Italy.

Thanks everyone. I contacted our bank and as I thought wire transfer is out as you have to do it in person and we are hours away from the nearest branch. I also have trust issues with PayPal.
So ATM withdrawals are the answer. Thanks for the heads up concerning the time difference.

Our Naples/ Sorrento driver and tour company informed us they will accept USD, and when we calculated the conversion, it was quite fair. You could ask. Good luck !