>Maybe forex companies have little choice, especially when you consider airport rents, staff etc. Yes, it's an incredibly profitable business and the airports

>Maybe forex companies have little choice, especially when you consider airport rents, staff etc. Yes, it's an incredibly profitable business and the airports know it. Airports will generally offer a monopoly or duopoly license to operate there and charge rent in the millions for busy terminals. That cost gets passed on to the consumer. I'm not sure what you mean by commission, but ignoring cash management costs, operators can do the conversion close enough to free as to not matter. For example, I can currently sell/buy EURUSD at a rate of 1.35080/1.35085 respectively. That's an effective cost from mid of 0.002%. Anything wider than that is gross margin.