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Payoneer Review – Is this a good alternative to PayPal?

Last updated: January 09, 20236 Comments

Payoneer

Payoneer is a payments and remittances company that has been around for many years.

Here’s some information about the Payoneer services:

Payoneer Prepaid Debit MasterCard Card

You can sign up for a Payoneer card, and receive your payments directly to that card. You pay a flat fee per payment received, and then the funds are loaded to your card within 2 business days.

You can also choose to pay an extra $3 to have it loaded within minutes. The card is held in USD, and you can use it to make purchases online, in stores, and at ATMs worldwide.

As a debit MasterCard card, all purchases in a non-USD currency are converted using MasterCard’s official exchange rates. A conversion charge of up to 3% also applies.

The Payoneer prepaid MasterCard works just like any other MasterCard. The card is accepted at all locations worldwide, wherever MasterCard is accepted electronically. You can use it at any point of sale location to make purchases, whether online or at retail locations. You can also use the Prepaid MasterCard at ATMs worldwide to withdraw cash. The Prepaid MasterCard may be used for online transactions wherever MasterCard is an accepted form of payment.

The fees for withdrawing at an ATM are $3.15+3% of the withdrawal amount for currency conversion.

Payoneer charges 1% of the payment amount when transferring to it.

[Read more…]

Filed under: Money, Payment Processors

Which PayPal E-Commerce Checkout Service Should You Use?

Last updated: January 09, 2023Leave a Comment

paypal_logo

Note: If you have any questions after reading this and the several other articles relating to PayPal on this site, please leave a comment or contact PayPal directly. Unfortunately due to time constraints I am unable to offer any advice over email so all emails related to PayPal will remain unanswered.

All e-commerce solutions such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Easy Digital Downloads will allow you to select one of out of several e-commerce checkout business solutions offered by PayPal.

The choice is between the following:

  • PayPal Website Payments Standard
  • PayPal Express Checkout
  • PayPal Payments Pro

Understanding which checkout service to use can be quite complicated as the PayPal documentation is not exactly thuser-friendlyriendly, so let’s try to demystify things a little bit here.

PayPal Website Payments Standard

If you use PayPal Website Payments Standard, when your customers check out, they will be directed to a page that allows them to log into their PayPal account or pay by credit card without having to sign up for a PayPal account. This is the best option if you anticipate that most of your customers will not want to sign up for a PayPal account.

It is the most common type of PayPal checkout used and it is available in many more countries than the other two options we are considering here.

PayPal Express Checkout

If you use PayPal Express Checkout, when your customers check out, they will be directed to a page that requires them to log into their PayPal account or create a new one. Therefore, this is the best option if you anticipate that most of your customers either have a PayPal account or will sign up for an account on checkout.

PayPal sees Express Checkout as a payment option that’s offered in addition to other payment choices such as a credit card gateway, and that adding Express is a way to allow PayPal members a very quick and easy way to pay using their PayPal account. PayPal also believes Express Checkout improves conversions/sales.

PayPal Express is available to merchants in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom or the United States.

PayPal Payments Pro

PayPal Payments Pro is a customizable solution that enables merchants to keep buyers on their website during the entire checkout and payment process. Merchants can host their own customized checkout pages and send transactions to PayPal, or they can have PayPal host the checkout pages and also manage security for sales and authorizations. PayPal Payments Pro can accept Paypal and PayPal credit payments, as well as credit and debit card payments. PayPal Payments Pro also includes an optimized mobile checkout experience.

PayPal Payments Pro is only available to merchants in the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom. A monthly service charge applies, and there is an account application process and credit check to complete before the feature can be activated on your account.  PayPal Express Checkout must be enabled in order for Website Payments Pro to be offered on your site.

PayPal sees Website Payments Pro as a payment gateway for handling credit cards. That’s exactly what it is. Coupled with Express Checkout, it gives your customers the maximum amount of choice about how to pay: either by credit card directly on your site, or by using their PayPal account to submit payment.

Note: if using PayPal Payments Pro to process credit cards, you must have an SSL certificate.

Conclusion

If you’re still confused or not sure which product to go for, just start off with PayPal Website Payments Standard. Most e-commerce solutions include this by default and it is the easiest to set up. Moreover the other two options might not be available to you, depending on where your business is based.

PayPal Website Payments Standard allows users the choice of signing in or not signing in, and can be considered the default choice; PayPal Express Checkout can be more efficient for PayPal users and may facilitate sales.

It may depend on whether or not you also have a credit card processing option; if you do, you can use PayPal Express Checkout, since the customer will only need to use this option to pay with PayPal funds.

If PayPal is your only payment method, you may want to use PayPal Website Payments Standard so that your customers have the option of using a credit card.

Whichever option you choose, keep in mind that your e-commerce system will probably have its own documentation guiding you on how to set up each of these PayPal solutions, so it shouldn’t be a big issue getting either one set up.

  1. Are You Losing out from PayPal’s Exchange Rates?
  2. 🤔 Which PayPal Account is Best for You?
  3. 💸 Changing Your PayPal Withdrawal Currency
  4. 💸 Understanding PayPal Cross Border Fees
  5. How to Withdraw From PayPal into a Maltese Bank Account
  6. 💳 Withdrawing Money From PayPal for Non-US Accounts
  7. Which PayPal E-Commerce Checkout Service Should You Use?
  8. 🤔 Should You Open Separate PayPal Accounts for Each of Your E-Commerce Stores?
  9. 🆚 PayPal VS Wise Borderless
  10. 💳 Linking Virtual Bank Accounts and Cards to PayPal (Revolut, Wise etc)
  11. How to Change Ownership of a PayPal Account

Filed under: Payment Processors

How to Withdraw From PayPal into a Maltese Bank Account

Last updated: January 10, 202320 Comments

paypal_logo

Note that in April 2020 things seem to have changed on PayPal’s end and they now allow adding a USD bank account based in Malta as well as permit a higher limit on debit card transfers, although I’m not sure what the new limit is.

In a recent development PayPal has implemented bank account withdrawals to people holding a PayPal account based in Malta. Prior to this development, the only possibilities for withdrawing money were the following:

  • Withdrawing to a credit card
  • Withdrawing to a US bank account

The big problem with withdrawing to a credit card is that it is limited to $2,500 at a time so it is very inconvenient for high volume sellers. Moreover there is a charge per withdrawal, so the fees quickly escalate.

PayPal’s automatic currency conversions (at disadvantageous rates) when withdrawing are another big issue. You’ll find many sites dedicated to PayPal-bashing because of this.

Since in Malta you cannot get a credit card for an account denominated in US dollars, sellers are stuck with automatic currency conversions (either on the PayPal side, or their own bank) from USD to EUR when withdrawing money to their credit card. Of course, I’m assuming that sales are being done in USD. Since the dollar is the de facto web currency, this is the case for most online shops.

With this new development I was hoping to open a USD bank account in Malta and withdraw USD from PayPal into this bank account, thus avoiding currency conversion altogether.

In my ideal scenario I would have then been able convert the money at will and possibly even bypass the bank’s charges by using Wise. Alas, this was not to be. After further questioning, the PayPal support agent informed me that the automatic currency conversion would still happen and they do not allow non-Euro denominated bank accounts from Malta to be linked to a Maltese user’s profile:

Do bear in mind that we would only offer the option to use an EUR denominated bank account at this time.  Which means that even if you add and use an USD based account, that it would automatically have funds converted to EUR upon withdraw.

For that specific matter, I cannot really recommend the use of an USD account, as you are not able to directly withdraw into it without otherwise having a double conversion take place.

So given the situation I’ll probably stick to withdrawing money to my card as with that method I can bypass the automatic currency conversion on PayPal’s side.

[Read more…]

  1. Are You Losing out from PayPal’s Exchange Rates?
  2. 🤔 Which PayPal Account is Best for You?
  3. 💸 Changing Your PayPal Withdrawal Currency
  4. 💸 Understanding PayPal Cross Border Fees
  5. How to Withdraw From PayPal into a Maltese Bank Account
  6. 💳 Withdrawing Money From PayPal for Non-US Accounts
  7. Which PayPal E-Commerce Checkout Service Should You Use?
  8. 🤔 Should You Open Separate PayPal Accounts for Each of Your E-Commerce Stores?
  9. 🆚 PayPal VS Wise Borderless
  10. 💳 Linking Virtual Bank Accounts and Cards to PayPal (Revolut, Wise etc)
  11. How to Change Ownership of a PayPal Account

Filed under: Money, Payment Processors

💸 Understanding PayPal Cross Border Fees

Last updated: January 10, 20236 Comments

paypal_logo
In this post I’ll explain PayPal’s cross border fee system. But first, a short recap on the fees that PayPal imposes in general.

PayPal charges fees whenever a transaction takes place. The one charge that is always present is PayPal’s own fee which goes towards paying off the processing of credit card payments.

Visa, MasterCard and American Express charge PayPal for every payment they process, and so they need to pass this fee on to sellers to cover their costs. They also need to make a profit on each transaction so part of that fee goes towards that purpose.

To recap, these are three instances that will trigger PayPal charges:

  1. When you receive money from a purchase.
  2. When you receive payments from outside your country or region.
  3. When you send personal payments using a credit card. The sender determines who pays the fee.
  4. When you withdraw money to your debit/credit card.

I am mostly concerned about the accepting payments for your business with PayPal, so I won’t be discussing the third scenario. I’ve also discussed the fourth scenario in previous articles on this site.

We’ve already talked briefly about the first scenario above, and to give you an idea here’s what you would be paying if you were based in the following countries:

  • US: 2.9% plus $0.30 USD per transaction
  • UK: 3.4% + 20p per transaction
  • Spain: 3,4 % + 0,35 EUR per transaction
  • Malta: also a Eurozone country, so fees are identical to those of Spain

As a side note, note that is very advantageous to have your PayPal account based in the US from a fee perspective, you get to pay 0.5% less than your European counterparts on the value of the transaction and also a lower fixed fee per transaction.

Moreover, if you are based in Europe but the bulk of your customers are based outside Europe, you will also be paying the cross border fee on top of paying more in basic fees.

On top of that, if you are charging everyone in Euros, you would also be hit by a currency conversion fee from, for example, USD to EUR. More on that later in this article.

It is also worth noting that there are discounts based on volume, so lets take Spain as an example. The screenshot below shows the sales ranges and corresponding tariffs per transaction. It clearly pays to pass more transactions through PayPal every month.

As far as I remember, the bulk transaction discount won’t be automatically applied, you need to ask for it buy opening a support ticket with Paypal.

spain paypal volume discounts

The above assumes that the sales were made within the same country that you have your PayPal account set up in. So for example a US seller selling to a US customer or a UK seller selling to a UK customer.

Cross border transactions, for example a UK seller selling to a US customer, trigger cross border fees, which is what I want to talk about in this article.

[Read more…]

  1. Are You Losing out from PayPal’s Exchange Rates?
  2. 🤔 Which PayPal Account is Best for You?
  3. 💸 Changing Your PayPal Withdrawal Currency
  4. 💸 Understanding PayPal Cross Border Fees
  5. How to Withdraw From PayPal into a Maltese Bank Account
  6. 💳 Withdrawing Money From PayPal for Non-US Accounts
  7. Which PayPal E-Commerce Checkout Service Should You Use?
  8. 🤔 Should You Open Separate PayPal Accounts for Each of Your E-Commerce Stores?
  9. 🆚 PayPal VS Wise Borderless
  10. 💳 Linking Virtual Bank Accounts and Cards to PayPal (Revolut, Wise etc)
  11. How to Change Ownership of a PayPal Account

Filed under: Money, Payment Processors

💸 Changing Your PayPal Withdrawal Currency

Last updated: March 21, 202489 Comments

paypal_logo

I’ve already written about how to avoid losing money from PayPal’s disadvantageous exchange rates when withdrawing money from your PayPal account to your local bank account, but in this post, I will be showing the exact process that is used at this point in time (June 2014) for anyone who wants to do the same. Unfortunately, you won’t find this information anywhere on PayPal’s website, so I had to figure things out myself by contacting their support staff.

First of all, a quick explanation of why I wanted to change my withdrawal currency. My local bank accounts are in Euro and since my business is based in Malta I am only allowed to withdraw money to the credit card issued by my bank or to a Euro bank account.

Sadly there is no option to have a credit card account in USD. Therefore what was happening was that whenever I withdraw from PayPal (where most of my funds are in USD), the PayPal system would automatically convert from USD to EUR to match my local bank account. The problem is that the rates PayPal uses are much worse than the conversion rates at my local bank. So I wanted the conversion to happen on the bank’s side rather than PayPal’s.

Luckily it turns out to be easy to do. All you need to do is notify PayPal manually that you want that particular credit card to receive USD rather than EUR, and you can do this by opening a support ticket from PayPal’s website. Below I am reproducing the reply I got from PayPal when I asked them to change my withdrawal currency:

Thank you for contacting PayPal regarding questions about the withdrawal options for your Business account in Malta.

For bank withdrawals, you can only add a US bank account to your Business account, and then withdraw your PayPal USD balance to there.

For credit card withdrawals into USD, we can change the currency for your cards added to your account into USD on your request. If you wish to do this, please confirm the last 4 digits of the card that you want to be changed to USD and we will then update this in our system. This will also resolve any currency conversion loss for you when making withdrawals.

Another annoying thing for me is the $2,500 limit for every withdrawal. There is a charge for every transaction, so it is not only inconvenient to be limited in this way, but I am also getting charged for multiple transactions when I could have more easily done one. Sadly there isn’t a solution to this latter issue. This is what the PayPal support rep had to say about my query in this regard:

Regarding your question about the 2500 USD withdrawal limit per transaction, I confirm that all withdrawal limits are overridden on your account from PayPal´s side. The 2500 USD withdrawal limit is a worldwide regulation on VISA´s side, so I regret that we cannot lift this limit. However, you can make as many withdrawals per day as you want, as long as they don´t exceed 2500 USD per transaction.

I hope this post helps clear things further for those of you who have asked me how to perform this little trick and save money on your withdrawals.

Note: If you have any questions after reading this and the several other articles relating to PayPal on this site, please leave a comment or contact PayPal directly. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I am unable to offer any advice over email so all emails related to PayPal will remain unanswered.

  1. Are You Losing out from PayPal’s Exchange Rates?
  2. 🤔 Which PayPal Account is Best for You?
  3. 💸 Changing Your PayPal Withdrawal Currency
  4. 💸 Understanding PayPal Cross Border Fees
  5. How to Withdraw From PayPal into a Maltese Bank Account
  6. 💳 Withdrawing Money From PayPal for Non-US Accounts
  7. Which PayPal E-Commerce Checkout Service Should You Use?
  8. 🤔 Should You Open Separate PayPal Accounts for Each of Your E-Commerce Stores?
  9. 🆚 PayPal VS Wise Borderless
  10. 💳 Linking Virtual Bank Accounts and Cards to PayPal (Revolut, Wise etc)
  11. How to Change Ownership of a PayPal Account

Filed under: Money, Payment Processors

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