My interest here is not merely academic. In fact the answer to the second half of the question is of more importance to me. The other day I was at a local bank paying a fee of a certain London organization for a certain service. The recipient made it a point that it should be paid in GBPs. What I had was euros and dollars, so to make my payment I had to go through nearly all of those currency back and forth switchings I told about in my earlier post, overpaying eventually a helluver (from my point of view) money. So, was the recipient’s stubbornness to be paid strictly in pounds justified or did it act according to the “those who own Porsches don’t care about gas prices” logic? And another thing, was the rip off inevitable or there are other less expensive ways to make such payments?