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.
Elizabeth says
Hello, Jean!
I want to ask what question/request that you sent to Paypal so you can get to change your currency back to USD? Because in my case, I’ve been withdrawing in USD since last September but suddenly last week, they start to converting to my local currency inside the Paypal not my bank.
I tried to contacting via twitter DM but I think it’s better to do it in support ticket on their website? Thank you.
Adam says
Hi
I am entrepreneur from Poland. There is PLN currency. I sell my products in Europe, so I get GBP and EUR, sometimes USD. I have bank account in each of these currency, but when I want to withdraw funds, paypal convert it to PLN…, even when I want to withdraw EUR from Paypal to EUR account in my bank! What should I tell them not to do it? I contacted with them, but support told me that I can withdraw funds only in local currency and only in my PLN bank account… Please help, what to do with them?
Regards, Adam
alex says
Yeap same here fucking paypal have card that has only USD but mother fuckers are converting money to GEL. i have not recived any emails from them about chnaging the rates to exhanging. so bey bey paypal 🙂
Roman says
Hi guys.
I receive payments in GBP and AUD, but my local currency is EUR.
As you know there is no option to withdraw another currency except local, so what if we cooperate?
If some one need GBP or AUD and have EUR we can help each other. I can send GBP or AUD to your acc and you send EUR to my.
What do you think about that? Looks like good idea.
Daniel says
I didn’t read all comments, so excuse me if this diverges from the topic. Just a general comment from me regarding settling payment in currencies other than what your bank account holds by default. I have worked with payment processors other than PayPal (such as Hyperwallet and Bancorp) that also encounter these limits, so it is certainly not just a PayPal limitations. Perhaps I’ll enquire with some of the powers that be next time to get clarification, but I suspect this might be a problem with how the transfer is being sent/received between the sending institution (PayPal, etc.) and the receiving institution (your bank). I’ve received regular international wire transfers in currencies other than my default bank account currency, and the bank converted it to the local currency automatically without ado. Perhaps part of the reason PayPal limits bank accounts to the local PayPal jurisdiction is that they are using some domestic interbank settling mechanism (lower processing fees, a la paper cheque deposit) rather than international wire standards (cable fees), therefore also limiting you to the domestic currency.
Musonda chisha says
When I log into paypal there is no option for withdrawing money…what should I do in this case or maybe I can’t do that depending on my location?
jS says
Hi again,
Just in case this information is useful of any of your readers.
I live in Japan and here Paypal Japan has another rules.
This is what the Customer representatives shared with me:
“Japanese PayPal at the moment could only transfer Japanese Yen to your Japanese bank account.
You could not transfer money to your linked credit card.
We don’t have this service.”
Elisabeth says
I’ve been trying to withdraw GBP as GBP to my US bank account. I’ve talked with two representatives and they have both told me they cannot do this and that Paypal always needs to convert to USD to then be sent to my US bank account. I have not figured out a way around this. I also tried your “make primary” button method and even with my account in GBP, it still wants to withdraw with paypal’s exchange rate to USD. Do you think I need a GBP bank account to make this work? Or perhaps a credit card? I don’t know how credit cards can receive money. I have a few credit cards but none that paypal recognizes as accounts able to be given withdrawals. I have capital one, chase, and american express and none of them show as available. Please advise!
Henri says
Hi Elisabeth,
same situation on my end.
Were you able to find a solution that avoids forcing you to use PayPal for the currency conversion part?
Elisabeth says
Nope, no solution. Sadly.
Rachel says
maybe transferwise?
Reg says
Transferwise is indeed the best option. You can have balances in any currency and you get perfect exchange rates and freedom to move each currency as you wish.
Nita says
Is it working in 2018 too?
Jean says
Yes
Henri says
Hi, thank you for the article.
But changing the primary currency from EUR to GBP or USD doesn’t avoid the currency conversion. At least, not as far as I’m able to judge in my case.
I can’t withdraw to a credit card either, only to my bank account.
Mary says
in 2019 too?
Craig says
I called Paypal NZ (New Zealand) and Australia today, 2017-01-09, and they confirmed that they will not do this for us: Australasia is stuck with the bad fees.
Jean says
That’s very strange, could you paste their reply here? I believe according to credit card regulations they are bound to give you the option when withdrawing.
Nino says
So here’s my story.
I live in the Balkans (non-EU country)
I have a debit card, and when I reached $1300 in my Paypal, I withdrew it. It arrived in the bank/debit card in Euros. I went and asked the bank, and they said that they did not convert the money.
Anyway, I told them to open a USD partition on my card, and then I called Paypal and instructed them to make it so that when I withdraw USD the money doesn’t get converted into my local currency. Then I withdrew $50 USD to test.
The money still arrived in my bank in Euros instead of USD.
Who the hell converts the money?
Jean says
It’s my understanding that in your case the USD would automatically be converted to EUR as they arrive at the bank, even though you have a USD partition on the card. I have tried a similar set up myself and had no luck in passing the money straight through in USD. Have a chat with your bank and let me know what they tell you, I’m interested in whether you can get this to work.
Jan says
In our case, we opened in Slovakia bank account in AUD, have credit card to it (in AUD), instructed PayPayl to switch our card currency to AUD and now we really received from PayPal AUD’s to our bank account.
Just – they have there funny 700 AUD limit per transaction …
Mary says
Hi Jan!
Interesting thing!
I am from Croatia and I did the same-I have my Visa credit card in Euros and have withdrawn 2000 Euros to this specific card. And I got 1880 € to my account!!!
They did double conversion!!! I lost 120€!!!
I called my bank and they said they didn’t charge anything from this transfer
I didn’t send any request earlier to PayPal to change default Croatian currency, simply because it’s common sense-Euro balance to Euro card, rigt?! That is the reason why I got and linked Euro credit card to PP in a first place.
I sent an email to customer service for explanation ( even it’s much clearer after reading this article and other posts), but I will probably call them on Monday( more extra costs!!!)
Olla says
Thanks for the interesting article and for actively replying to the questions. Could you give an indication of the fee PayPal charges for each 2500USD transfer to your credit card?
Also, this may be a silly question: how does the money get from the credit card to your bank account? Does your bank simply transfer this and this point perform the currency conversion according to their rate assuming your bank account is in your local currency and not USD?
Thank you!
Jean says
The charge from PayPal for withdrawing $2500 will be $2.50. Credit or Debit cards issued by your bank are by nature tied to one of your bank accounts and so the process you outline is correct. The conversion will happen automatically on the bank’s side and you’ll find the money in the bank account associated to that card.
Jarod De Guzman says
On withdrawing funds, which way will I save more?
US$ directly to my Php bank account; or by converting via PayPal first US$ to Php?
Jean says
That will depend on your bank’s exchange rates. Check those, then compare them with PayPal’s rates and decide what’s best for you.
flynderella says
Hi Jean, thanks for writing on this topic. Im wanting to withdraw a fairly hefty amount from my USD balance of my Paypal account to my Australian bank account, which I have either a MasterCard or Visa debit card attached. I’d also like to avoid the crap exchange rate, so have written to Paypal with instructions in line with what you’ve shared (namely, wanting them to send the money in USD & allowing my bank to perform the conversion). I wasn’t able to find where to ‘open a ticket’ & so sent the help request through the standard help desk topic based option. If you think theres a specific help area on the paypal site I should be directing these instructions to, or can you give more specific instruction on how to ‘open a ticket’.
Thanks!
Jean says
Yes, that is the way I ‘opened my ticket’. Just wait 48 hours max and they’ll get back to you. Good luck!
serangoon says
If this conversion is causing you $100 a month, the right way around this is not to investigate over how the currency conversion works in Paypal. Instead you should get a US bank account. While most banks would not allow you without a US social security number, you can open a brokerage account with any of the broker firms. All brokerage trading accounts comes with a current account, which is similar to a bank. Then, just enter the route and bank account number in your Paypal to make withdrawals. Takes 3 days to arrive in your brokerage account, which then you can either trade in US stocks (the main reason you would be opening this account actually), or you can send them a fax requesting for a $30 international wire transfer to your local bank which has USD as a currency.
Jean says
That’s a very interesting idea and I will definitely look into it. Do you have any recommendations for brokerage accounts?
Design says
Hi Jean,
I’m italian, I receive my payments in USD but my VISA debit card is in EUR; I contacted Paypal to remove the automatic conversion and they first replied to me with and automatic answer and then after another mail they called me by phone. Unluckly after a long conversation they said that it isn’t possible to remove the automatic conversion. I think that the person I speaked to wasn’t aware of the possibility that you explained in your article.
Do you know some other method to remove the limit or to contact the paypal.com directly without using the italian customer service?
Thank you.
Jean says
Sorry I don’t know of any other way to get in touch. When I access the Help section from my PayPal account I correspond directly with the English-speaking customer support reps. It looks like your account automatically directed you to the Italian-speaking reps which might not know about this possibility.
Design says
Hi Jean,
After months exchanging mails with the paypal customer service they changed my VISA card currency to USD, but now when I try to withdraw in USD the automatic conversion is still applied as you can see in these screenshots.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/k9wwU7A.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/rMQoBf6.png[/img]
I contacted the customer service again and they said that the only way to avoid the conversion is to have an US Bank account because the default currency is tied to the country the customer lives.
I don’t know how to proceed at this point, can you help me?
Jean says
Hi, sorry to hear about your experience. Unfortunately I can’t help you as it is something that each person has to figure out with the PayPal reps. Perhaps you can open a new support ticket and you will get connected to a more helpful PayPal support rep.
Tommaso says
Hey, i saw from your screenshot you’re Italian. May i ask you something about paypal?
Viktorija says
I contacted PayPal asking to transfer my money to credit card but they said they don’t transfer to credit debit cards only to bank accounts..
Jean says
That might be the case in the country where you reside. In my case they allow transfers to bank accounts denominated in Euro, credit cards or US-based bank accounts.
Viktorija says
hi, I am a selling on Ebay USA, but Im based in UK. Getting payments in USD to my paypal, would like to transfer to my bank account which is in GBP. If I use paypal transferring to my bank account I will loose £200, what can i do? Thank you.
Jean says
Hi Viktorija please see my other post about this topic for the solution to that issue.
Thu says
Hi Jean, I have a little question.
I used to live in Vietnam, that’s when I created my Paypal account. Now I’m studying in Finland and want to withdraw my money in Euro. I have visa debit card in from Nordea Bank in Finland. Can you tell me how to do that because paypal keeps telling me that “All transaction amounts are in your local currency(Vietnam Dong)” when I try to withdraw my money?
Thank you so much for replying me.
Jean says
Hi Thu, I believe you need to submit a help request with PayPal and explain the situation. Tell them that you now live in Finland and would like to move your account to Finland. They might ask you for proof which you should be able to provide without any problem.
Edy says
Hello Jean,
Such an interesting article. I was reading with full interest as I would like to reduce the amount I lost due to the fees (Fixed fee (MYR2.00) + 4.4%) plus Currency Exchange fee (4% added to the exchange rate).
By the way, I live in Malaysia.
I have tried changing the primary currency to USD, however it does not work when I tried to withdraw the money into my local account. It will be converted into MYR by default. No options to disable this.
Then, when I referred to clause 5.1 (How to Withdraw Money – User Agreement for PayPal Services), it states this:
“Depending on the country in which your Account is registered, the currencies in which you may withdraw your funds to your local bank account may be limited. With the exception of Users with Accounts registered in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, when withdrawing your funds to your local bank account, funds may only be withdrawn in your local currency.”
I also checked the fees for withdrawing the funds to the card, but the fee is generally higher. So no luck here for PayPal users in Malaysia.
I stumbled upon a service called TransferWise, claiming that their rates are up to 85% lower that banks or PayPal. I look forward to reading your review for this service.
Many thanks.
Jean says
Thanks for the feedback from Malaysia Edy, in my case I have no option to withdraw to a bank account, so I withdraw to my credit card. By emailing PayPal I was able to withdraw in USD rather than EUR and thus bypass the currency exchange fee from PayPal’s side.
I haven’t had the need for TransferWise so far, but I know many people who have used it successfully. Another one is Kantox.
Dan says
Hey Jean! nice post,
Simple question , when you withdraw a different currency to a Visa card ex : USD to EUR card, is there any 1-3% addition above the the mid market exchange rate ?
Jean says
That’s correct Dan. You usually get a disadvantaged rate compared to local banks when you let PayPal handle the conversion. This might not apply to every country but it certainly applied to my case here in Malta.
Pavel Ciorici (@ciorici) says
Thanks for tip, Jean! This helped me too, and PayPal were quick and replied to me in just a few hours:
I have updated the card you referred to now, to be able to withdraw in USD rather than in EUR. Do bear in mind that any new cards added to our system will always be added using your banks local currency, where it will have to be manually adjusted at your request to us directly.
P.S. it was nice to meet you at the #wceu! See you next year, hopefully!
Jean says
Glad that helped Pavel. Nice meeting you too, till the next one!
ed says
hi author,
this might be a very stupid question but is it necessary to use PayPal’s currency converter before withdrawing your funds or does PayPal does the conversion automatically to your local currency? paypal is set to my local currency, I am receiving payments in USD. If i withdraw USD amount, will that be automatically ne converted to my default local currecy?
Jean says
PayPal does the conversion automatically unless you tell them not to. If you withdraw to a bank account with another currency (not USD) then the conversion from USD to the other currency will happen automatically.
ed says
thanks for the quick response Jean, I mainly asked this because the paypal app for smartphones does not have the currency converter option and I am used in converting before withdrawing funds. ty
Tamás Dornbach says
Dear Jean,
I use PayPal from Hungary. I am going to leave to Germany for half a year in a week’s time. As many have mentioned it above, the scenario is the same with me too: I can only withdraw my funds (in USD) converted into Hungarian Forints by Paypal. Do you think I could immediately have my USD converted into Euros by PayPal if I established an account in Germany? I have my doubts as I only see two options at the nationality section when I want to add a new bank account (yes, I would withdraw my funds to my personal bank account).
Thanks very much for the help!
All the best,
Tamás
Jean says
Hi Tamas, my understanding is that the USD will be automatically converted to Euros for German based PayPal accounts.
Naleem says
Friends help me..
I have some money in my PayPal account. But I can’t gat that.
I’m from Sri Lanka that’s my problem.
So what to do..???
Jean says
First step is to contact PayPal support Naleem, I’m sure they’ll help you out. I personally know nothing about the PayPal situation in Sri Lanka so I can’t be of much help unfortunately.
Pierluca says
Thank you for answering me,
i will continue to have EURO as main currency into my paypal account since i receive payment in euro and gbp (50% / 50%)
Today i added a new italian mastercard debit card which is euro based to my paypal account.
Naturally paypal recognizes EURO as debit card’s currency.
Tomorrow i will ask to paypal to change debit card’s currency to GBP
and then i will try to withdraw my gbp (on paypal) to the mastercard debit card.
that’s all.
i hope it will work!!! it should be fantastic…i will update you.
Jean says
Sounds good!
Pierluca says
Nothing to do, it doesn’t work.
I was able to change debit card’s currency from eur to gbp,
but when i try to withdraw gbp from my paypal account to debit card ,
paypal converts gbp to eur in the confirmation page.
i tried to call paypal, and they told me that i could not receive gbp, because i m in italy with an italian account.
so paypal can send me only EUR.
🙁
Jean says
Hmm you’ve done it a bit differently than I did. I kept my local bank account in EUR and only asked PayPal to send me the payments in USD (thus not performing the conversion) and they were happy to oblige. This seems to be a little known hack however that some of their own support staff might not even be aware of.
Pierluca says
Hello,
i’m italian, i receive some payments in GBP, but i have bank account in EUR, and a debit card in EUR because it is Euro based.
what you suggest is the following:
-change from EUR to GBP as main paypal currency
– send a request to paypal to change debit card’s currency from EUR to GBP
– withdraw GBP from paypal account to debit card (i should receive gbp, and my debit card should be able to convert it in EUR)
is it right?
if yes i have this question:
what is your debit (or credit) card which is euro based, but it accepts USD in input from paypal?
Thank you
Jean says
Ciao Pierluca,
My debit card has been issued by a bank in Malta (HSBC) and it is Euro based. I believe debit cards accept any currency input from PayPal by default, then the currency gets converted automatically into your account’s currency, in my case EUR.
For your PayPal account, choose the currency that you will be receiving most payments in. So if most of your clients want to pay you in GBP (think about what’s most convenient for the majority of your clients), use GBP. Then instruct PayPal to forego the automatic conversion when withdrawing to your debit card, so that the conversion happens on arrival of the money in your bank account. Usually banks have better conversion rates than Paypal.
Šime Vidas says
Could you share how much better your bank’s rate is compared to PayPal? I have found, that in my case, the difference doesn’t seem to be that big. PayPal’s rate is 1 USD = 6.24 HRK (my local currency), whereas my bank’s buying rate is 6.29, meaning that I would get an additional $8 for each $1000 I withdraw if I used my bank’s rate. Are your savings per $1000 bigger?
Jean says
Take a look at my rate comparison on this post: https://jeangalea.com/exchange-rates-in-malta/
marzio says
Do you know if in the future they will allow adding maltese bank accounts to maltese paypal accounts?
Jean says
I’ve asked many times but they’ve never committed to a date on that. We keep on hoping 🙂
Marzio says
Jean, another thing is that you said you are getting charged for every withdrawal to your card. The thing that i don’t understand is that if you are charged because of the currency conversion or because paypal charges for withdrawals?
Jean says
Paypal charges for withdrawals to credit cards. That’s the charge I am referring to.
Marzio says
Hey Jean, i have good news.Try for yourself if this workaround works and then report back 🙂
Arghil says
Hi Jean,
I would like to know, if your set up applies to my client from UK. He is using GBP account in PayPal and from his online selling, he receives currency in AUD, USD and EUR. Can he use the same process as you have even he has multi-currency in Paypal? He ask me an advice how can he save from PayPal conversion rate.
Jean says
I presume so Arghil. In that case he would need to instruct PayPal to not perform any currency conversions for withdrawals in any currency. The conversion will then occur at the bank’s end where the AUD/USD/EUR is converted to GBP at the bank’s rate on the day of the conversion.
Nibs says
Hi Jean, first thanks for your contributions on this, it all helps. I have a EUR based online seller, who receives pretty large amounts in 4-5 currencies (GBP/USD/CAD/SEK).
Can he extract these to bank accounts in Europe but in these currencies or does he have to submit to PP’s abusive exchange rates ?
He has a USD bank account but in a European bank, also SEK.
Thanks.
Jean says
I am not sure if you can ask PayPal to pass through all the currencies. I have been successful in getting them to pass USD to my EUR denominated credit card so that the conversion happens on my bank’s end. It would definitely be interesting to know if this can be done with multiple currencies as your client needs. Let us know how it goes.
Jan says
From my experience, the owner of the accounts would have to have credit card to each one of those and would have to ask PayPal them to switch the currency on each manually to the currency of the bank account.Then it will go 1:1 with just small fee for each transaction. (in our case 3.5 AUD per 700 AUD transaction)
However – in our case, they applied 700 AUD per transaction limit and refuse to lift it up even we fullfilled all the requirements they have told us about (and they see we would have to make dozens of transactions every year to be able to send the funds from PayPal to our CC)
I am pretty disapointed from all this complications PayPal is trying on their clients and definitely am looking for alternative.
ces says
Thanks so much for your tips.
By the way, have you found a way to dodge the abusive hidden fees by paypal when withdrawing USD to your local bank?
Jean says
With the method described above there are no hidden fees applied when you withdraw to a credit card as I do. I haven’t ever tried withdrawing to a bank account as I’m not allowed to do so by Paypal.
Le says
How did you open a support ticket on Paypal? Also, what’s the difference between withdrawing to a bank account and to a credit card linked to it?
Le says
Turns out it didn’t work for me. Here’s what the CS said after like 2 failed attempts to contact them: “If you would like to withdraw your funds directly in USD, I’m afraid you will need to attach a US based bank account.”
Jean says
I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you, I documented the exact process I used in this post and it still works for me to this day. Maybe your setup is slightly different from mine. I withdraw to a credit card and not to a bank account, I believe that is the difference between our cases.