Paypal fees are (in my locality, at least) calculated on the basis of 3.4% of the transaction value, plus GBP0.20
So what would happen if someone were to paypal me, say, 15 pence? - the calculated fee would be 3.4% of 15p (just over half a penny, so it might be rounded to a whole penny), plus 20p; so the fee would exceed the value of the transaction by 6 pence.
Is this what actually happens? Could someone actually make me net poorer by sending me Paypal micropayments?
Well, that’s what the fee schedule says.
However, we recently received a payment of $0.42 USD and the fee was $0.00 USD
Another payment of $2.44 USD and the fee was $0.38 USD
Another payment of $1.00 USD and the fee was $0.33 USD
I think the system waives the fee if the amount is under $1.00
Do you want a $0.99 to test it ?
That sounds reasonable.
If you’re up for it, yes, that would be interesting; might as well just make it $0.05 though. My ID for PayPal is [email address removed].
Cheers!
IME, PayPal waives the fee under a certain amount. One-cent payments, for example, don’t seem to incur a fee.
Len
If that’s true, I suppose the reason this isn’t mentioned by ebay at all is that they wouldn’t want anyone breaking a payment into a thousand small pieces, none of which were big enough to attract a fee.
:smack: ebay/paypal = same thing.
Sorry, I missed this thread.
0.05 has been sent your way.
I hope it doesn’t cost you anything 
Well, that was interesting; here’s the pertinent details for the PayPal transaction at my end:
Total Amount: $0.05 USD
Fee Amount: -$0.05 USD
Net Amount: $0.00 USD
So it looks like the fee isn’t waived, but it is capped at the value of the transaction (under normal circumstances it will be much less than this value, of course). I’m not sure whether this would be any different for anyone paying me in my native currency of GBP.
I’d also be interested to know what happens if I try to refund this transaction… is that OK?
I paid a friend 1 US cent and the fee took it all, so it’s not a matter of native currency. But the refund would be interesting to try?
Sure thing.
I’ll also send you 5p and see whether your native currency has anything to do with it.
The refund came through as:
Refund From YOURNAME 14 Dec. 2005 Completed Details $0.05 USD $0.00 USD
The very last column is the fee column, so no fee on the refund. Did you get your fee refunded?
I’ll end you 5p and see whether your native currency has anything to do with it.
Thanks for your help with these experiments; all of them came through, but were wiped out by a fee to exactly the same value; refunding them deducted a net refund of zero from my account, plus a refunded fee of .05, so the transaction was exactly reversed in all aspects.
We’d better stop the experiments now, lest PP start viewing the activity as suspicious.
Cool. Glad to be of help.