# The exchange rate you look up is not the rate you get > Google, the ECB and our own converter all show the mid-market rate. The ECB says in writing that its rates are not for transactions. The gap between that number and the one on your receipt is the price of the transfer. - **Publisher:** VOTVS (Fair coverage for everyone) — https://votvs.com - **Author:** VOTVS - **Published:** 2026-08-19 - **Language:** en - **Topic:** Money - **Canonical URL:** https://votvs.com/ar/articles/mid-market-rate-explained - **Tags:** currency, money, exchange rates, explainer - **Facts last verified:** 19 August 2026 --- Look up "USD to TRY" and you get a number. It is a real number, published by serious institutions, and no bank will give it to you. That is not a scandal. It is how the price of a currency transaction is expressed, and once you know it you can measure exactly what you are being charged. ## The number you are looking at What search engines, central banks and comparison tools quote is the **mid-market rate**: the midpoint between the price the market is currently buying a currency at and the price it is selling at. It is a reference. Nobody trades at it. The European Central Bank is unusually blunt about this. It publishes euro reference rates every working day at around **16:00 CET**, based on a concertation procedure between European central banks that normally takes place around 14:10 CET — and then attaches this to them: > Reference rates are not intended to be used in any market transactions, whether directly or indirectly (as an underlying benchmark), but for information purposes only. It goes further and says using them for transaction purposes is "strongly discouraged." So the central bank that publishes one of the most-cited exchange rates in the world tells you, in writing, not to expect to trade at it. ## Where the money is made Every provider quotes you a rate on one side of that midpoint. They buy the currency from you slightly below the mid and sell it to you slightly above. The distance is the **spread**, and it is revenue. This matters because the spread is not always presented as a price. The World Bank, when it measures what a cross-border transfer costs, counts three separate components: the fee charged to send, **the margin taken on the exchange rate**, and sometimes a fee charged to the person receiving the money. It counts the margin because leaving it out would make the advertised number meaningless. Which is the practical warning. A transfer advertised at zero fee is not free if the rate has been moved. Across all the services the World Bank tracked in the third quarter of 2025, the average total cost of sending $200 was 6.36 per cent — and much of that never appears on a receipt as a fee. ## Working out what you were charged You do not need a comparison site for this. You need two numbers you already have. 1. **Your effective rate** = amount that arrived ÷ amount you sent. 2. **The mid-market rate** on the day, from any reference source — the [VOTVS converter](/en/convert) uses it, as do search engines and the ECB. The percentage gap between them is your margin. Add any stated fee and you have the total cost of that transfer, in the same terms the World Bank uses, and you can compare it with the 6.36 per cent global average. An example. You send 1,000 units, the recipient gets 47,000 of the other currency, so your effective rate is 47.00. The mid-market rate that day was 47.89. The gap is 0.89, or **1.86 per cent** of the mid — the margin you paid, before any fee. ## What our converter shows, and what it does not Ours shows the mid-market rate, from a public rates provider, refreshed hourly. That is deliberate and it has a limit worth stating: **it is a reference, not a quote.** No transfer will land exactly on it. Use it the way the ECB intends its own rates to be used — as the honest midpoint you measure an offer against. If a provider is within a fraction of a per cent of it, you are being charged very little. If the offer is several per cent away, you now know what that costs you, and you can look up the [same corridor in the World Bank data](https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org/countrycorridors) and see whether anyone nearby is cheaper. ## Questions people ask ### What is the mid-market rate? The midpoint between the price at which the market is buying a currency and the price at which it is selling. It is the reference number quoted by search engines, central banks and comparison tools. It is not a rate anyone will trade with you at. ### Why can I not get the rate Google shows? Because that is a reference rate, not an offer. Every provider quotes a rate on one side of the midpoint, and the distance from the midpoint is how the transaction is priced. The European Central Bank states plainly that its published reference rates are not intended for use in transactions. ### How do I work out what I actually paid? Divide the amount that arrived by the amount you sent. That gives your effective rate. Compare it with the mid-market rate on the day of the transfer, and the difference is the margin you paid on top of any stated fee. ### Does a zero-fee transfer really cost nothing? Not necessarily. The World Bank counts the exchange-rate margin as part of the cost of a transfer precisely because a service can advertise no fee and take its revenue from the rate instead. ## Sources - Euro foreign exchange reference rates — European Central Bank. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/euro_reference_exchange_rates/html/index.en.html - About Remittance Prices Worldwide — World Bank. https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org/about-remittance-prices-worldwide - Remittance Prices Worldwide, Q3 2025 main report and annex — World Bank, Q3 2025. https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/2026-04/RPW_main_report_and_annex_Q325.pdf --- Published by VOTVS. Free to quote with attribution and a link to https://votvs.com/ar/articles/mid-market-rate-explained.