Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Paypal fees

A friend of mine sent me $550 over Paypal. He had to pay a $21 fee, and the transfer is not finalized for a few days, since his Paypal account was not funded.
Now, he tells me there is some indication that if I had sent him a "request" for the money first, he would not have had to pay the fee, and also the transfer would have been instant.
Does anybody know if there's any truth to this?

5 comments:

Philocalist said...

A request from him (depending on precisely how it was made) would possibly be seen by Paypal as a payment MADE by you for goods, which I believe would not attract a fee as such ... under those circumstances, your friend would have had a 'sellers' fee to pay ..... However, funds transfer would only have been immediate if a/ he had funds in his (Paypal) account, was a certified user, or had a valid credit card attached to the account, which would be used in the event his bank had no funds.
Then, of course, after the funds have arrived in your Paypal account, it can take up to 10 days to actually reach your bank account after YOU have initiated the transfer there.

There again, eBay / Paypal can be a law unto themselves, so don't take what I say as gospel! :-)

Bronislaus Janulis / Framewright said...

PayPal charges a percentage fee for transfers of money, instantaneous, but only if the sender has the money. I use it for payments for work done when I don't want to wait for the "check is in the mail."

If I request the money, I get charged the fee, and it seems if I send money, the other party gets charged the fee.

As P said about law.

Anonymous said...

IF he sends you money via a personal transfer (i.e., not for goods/services) AND IF the money comes from his paypal balance or a bank account AND IF he's in the same country and using the same currency, THEN there shouldn't be a fee. Otherwise you get socked...

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Ah, thanks.

(For me, this scenario is a vanishingly small minority of transactions.)

Anonymous said...

Don't listen to Bron, he's never sold anything as his work is shit.