I have some money in PayPal. I could convert it directly into cash, but that would incur non-negligible fees. Or I could avoid the fees by spending it somewhere that accepts PayPal. This mostly means online businesses, and (like most folks) the online business I spend the most with is Amazon.
Except that Amazon doesn’t accept PayPal.
Poking around online, I’ve found a couple of potential solutions to this. First, one can get a PayPal Mastercard debit card, usable wherever Mastercard is. The problem with this is that it requires either a business account, or at least $500 per year of money flowing in to PayPal, neither of which do I have.
The second solution I’ve seen is that there are websites which sell gift cards. Go to such a website, buy an Amazon gift card, and pay with PayPal, then use the card on Amazon. But of the two such sites I found quickly, one has abysmal reviews, and the other has Amazon cards, but doesn’t actually let you buy one.
Why does converting to cash incur fees for you? I regularly transfer money from my Paypal account to my checking account and it has never cost any fees. How are you doing the transfer?
You can do an “instant” transfer of cash from Paypal to your bank which incurs a fee. You can do a one-day transfer which incurs no fee – at least for me.
Ah, OK, I’ll look around more for this. They seem to bury that option under the one that makes them more money.
As for spending it elsewhere, I don’t want to be spending just for the sake of spending. If it’s for something I would be buying anyway, then sure, I can just use the money I would have used for that on other things (like my Amazon purchases, say). If, say, I could use PayPal at the grocery store, that’d be fine. But I don’t think any grocery store takes PayPal.
ebay, as mentioned, accepts paypal.
But can you transfer it to a bank account? I’ve never had any charges for doing that. In fact, for a while, I was using paypal to transfer money between two bank accounts since it’s free and fast(ish).
Wal Mart accepts PayPal. I just made a purchase there last night. Shipping isn’t free unless you spend over a certain amount. I can’t find the info at the moment. But you can ship to your local wal mart for free.
I thought this was going to be easy. Just go to PayPal’s own gift card page and buy an Amazon gift card. I’ve done this several times. But apparently not recently. No longer offers them.
It seems haphazard. Has ITunes, Google Play, Lowes, Home Depot and Staples. But no Walmart or Target. Oh, well.
