Personal Blog of Carl Pei

A few days ago I made by first PayPal withdrawal. I really had to stop spending my PayPal dollars on eBay since I am saving for a trip to China and Japan this summer.

Many people probably have questions regarding an international PayPal withdrawal, I had too. Unfortunately for me I had nowhere to look for more information. Hopefully this post can at least help you relieve some stress when your important moment comes.

Ready to withdraw your hard earned dollars? Just follow these steps!

1. Login to PayPal.
2. Go to “Profile” and add a bank account if you haven’t already.
3. Go to “Withdraw”. Remember, it is free only if you are planning to withdraw more than a certain amount in your local currency. In my case the minimal amount was 500 SEK (roughly 70 USD).
4. Done! PayPal will tell you that it will take 5-7 business days until the money reaches your account.

The last part was the one I had the most problems with. 5-7 business days, that was at least a week and could potentially take up to 11 days!

It turned out much better than expected. I made the withdrawal on February 18th, a Sunday. It took only two business days for the money to arrive, so on the third day, the 23th it was already in my account. Something rather funny happened also. When I logged into my bank the day before I saw that a transfer had been made, but not an increase in actual money in my account. I became hysterical as I thought I had lost money. Then, I saw the date of the transfer (23) and realized that the bank was just pre-reporting the transfer.

It is also noteworthy that PayPal made the transfer with a Swedish bank account, which means no additional fee for me! From previous experience there would otherwise have been a fee of around $10 if it came from abroad.

The only thing that bothered me was their extremely poor currency conversion rate. Well, I guess if you want service you have to pay for it.

Overall, this has been and extremely painless, fast and pleasant experience. I can see why PayPal is the leader in online payment processing.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.