PayPal hidden fees and how to notice them

While starting my business in the beginning I never checked how much money I received from my clients as a payment. As I was using PayPal for online payments I only gave my PayPal account and withdraw money when they were sent. Of course, as I am not in a country where you can pay with Euros or US Dollars, I usually converted them money into the local currency and never noticed the difference in the sum.

As you probably know PayPal is a popular transactional website that allows you to send and receive money online quickly and easily. When I started Payoneer was not that famous and somehow I trusted PayPal more so I made it my primary payment method.

It was only three months ago when I started to calculate the amount of money I lost in fees while getting paid online via PayPal.

So I did a research and starting to read even more about this thing everyone calls “hidden fees” – or the amount of money PayPal deducts from your account as fees. (And they can be a lot of those fees depending on the amount you receive and the business you run). But there is some good news even though PayPal does charge fees for some of its transactions, it does offer money transfers that do not incur charges. You will be able to send, receive and withdraw money without incurring any fees.

But let me share you some tips on where you can potentially have problems with PayPal “hidden fees”:

While Sending Money

If you want to send money to your friends and family than there will be fees when you use your PayPal balance or connected bank account as your funding source.

But when the transaction is funded by credit, debit or PayPal credit, PayPal charges 2.9% of the amount of your transaction plus $0.30 per transaction.

So for an example: a payment of $100, will be charged $3.20 ($2.90+$0.30) to the account sending the money.

For all of you that transfer money internationally you will be charged an additional fee. Typically, this will be somewhere between 0-2% when funded by your bank account or PayPal balance. If you use credit or debit, then it will be 2.9% to 5.99% plus a fixed fee based on the currency of the transaction will be billed to you.

Note that international transfers to Canada in US dollars are free if they are funded by a bank or account balance.

While Receiving Money

When you receive a notification that you have received money on your PayPal account, there are no fees incurred for receiving payments, and you can use that amount to send money through PayPal or to transfer to your connected bank account. While receiving money within the USA is free if it is done using the PayPal, requesting from another user to send you money with their email address or number, will cost you 2.9% of the transfer amount + $0.30 USD.

While Withdrawing Money

Depending on which country are you, PayPal has different fees. In my case, as I am from Bulgaria, my fees for withdrawal are 2.00 EUR per transaction. That is why you should check your transaction fees when starting using PayPal for your online payments.

Of course, PayPal has different other fee charges but this is the basic info you need to know when sending, receiving and withdrawing money. And also there are other ways you can receive and send money online such as Payoneer, Stripe or eCheck for example but all of them calculate fees for transactions, withdrawal or conversion if there are payment in foreign currency.

If you are still not sure how much money you pay for fees before sending you invoice to your clients calculate your amount fees with Envoice fee calculator.

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