Paid via PayPal from Canada

[cityben]

Hi all

I've been doing some work for a Canadian company. It's come to payday and they're struggling to send over the money from their bank. They asked could they do it through PayPal despite be giving them IBAN and SWIFT codes.

Does anyone else do this and what are steps involved?

I'm thinking

1. Set up business PayPal acc
2. Give them acc details
3. Once received payment, transfer money to business account

Any big fees I should be aware of?

Any other options?

[SueEllen]

They are probably "struggling" because it costs them money to send a transaction to the UK. If they went into the bank with all the information you provided the bank tellers would help them to set up and send the payment. Oddly banks are very helpful with transactions you have to pay for.

Paypal charge you currency conversion fees. So while it will cost them nothing to pay you that way it will cost you money to do the conversion and get it into your bank account. The fees are on the paypal website.

[glippiglop]

Last time I received money from someone via PayPal (3 years ago), they took a big chunk of money through their % despite the fact that they were essentially the middle man in a simple bank transfer.

DON'T DO IT. It's their problem - tell them that you don't have a PayPal account and they should sort their tulip out.

[DaveB]

Last time I received money from someone via PayPal (3 years ago), they took a big chunk of money through their % despite the fact that they were essentially the middle man in a simple bank transfer.

DON'T DO IT. It's their problem - tell them that you don't have a PayPal account and they should sort their tulip out.

Or work out the paypal and currency conversion fees and tell them you will only do it if they pay them.

[cityben]

Or work out the paypal and currency conversion fees and tell them you will only do it if they pay them.

Yeah, that was the plan. Just trying to figure out how much. Was thinking +5%

[darmstadt]

I had a similar problem with my American contract, their bank weren't able to do the transfer for some weird reason (my previous American contract were able to though and the one before that used to just post a cheque) so its now transferred via their bank to Western Union (I believe) and the currency charges seem okay

[borderreiver]

PayPal charges 3.4% +20p per transaction IIRC, but it's more for transactions from outwith the UK. Could be more like 4% for a Canadian transaction, even if in Sterling. Best check on their website.

It's also not all that easy to set up a PayPal business account - they obviously have to verify that you're a business and that can easily take a couple of days (I speak from experience). Plus, every once in a while, PayPal decides that some transaction you have had is somehow dodgy and locks your account down for a couple of weeks while it's investigated. In that time, all the funds in your PP account are frozen, of course.

So avoid if you can ...

[cityben]

I had a similar problem with my American contract, their bank weren't able to do the transfer for some weird reason (my previous American contract were able to though and the one before that used to just post a cheque) so its now transferred via their bank to Western Union (I believe) and the currency charges seem okay

The client mentioned Western Union. How does it work? Does it go direct to you bank account?

[cityben]

PayPal charges 3.4% +20p per transaction IIRC, but it's more for transactions from outwith the UK. Could be more like 4% for a Canadian transaction, even if in Sterling. Best check on their website.

It's also not all that easy to set up a PayPal business account - they obviously have to verify that you're a business and that can easily take a couple of days (I speak from experience). Plus, every once in a while, PayPal decides that some transaction you have had is somehow dodgy and locks your account down for a couple of weeks while it's investigated. In that time, all the funds in your PP account are frozen, of course.

So avoid if you can ...

Managed to set one up quite quickly. They send a 1p transaction to your bank with a verification code instantly. I checked online banking and got code from there

[Contreras]

PayPal used to have a service called "mass pay". It's different because the sender pays the fees and the receiver gets the precise amount billed. The fees were also lower than standard paypal. It is/was intended as a batch payment facility. I think you had to upload a text file describing the transaction or something. A quick Google suggests it still exists so maybe worth a quick look.