If I open a PayPal account and link it to a bank account, it looks like I have to first transfer money from my bank to the PayPal account. Is this correct, or do payments come directly from the bank account itself? Can anyone explain the specifics of using PayPal with a bank account?
If you link a bank account to your PayPal account, you can make payments directly from the bank account. I don’t recall ever having to transfer money into a PayPal account.
I’ve recently set up a Paypal account to. The bank account linkage thing is new to me, but here’s what I figured out:
You don’t have to transfer money from your bank account to Paypal. To verify that your bank account is real, Paypal will make two very small deposits (in the pennies range). Once the deposits go through, you log on to Paypal and tell them exactly what the amounts were. That way, they know that you are indeed the person who has access to that bank account.
When you pay for something with Paypal, the payment will be automatically deducted from your bank account unless you specifically tell it to use a credit card. You have to make the specification with every payment. This threw me for a while and almost upset my bank account balance, so be careful.
Otherwise, Paypal works much the same as before. Hope that helps.
Well, maybe I’m missing something fairly obvious, but why does PayPal give you the option to transfer money to your PayPal account from your bank account? What would be the point if any PayPal dealings come directly out of your bank account?
IIRC, when I opened a PayPal account, a small amount (<$1) was transferred to confirm the validity of said account.
Re the question of putting funds in a PayPal account: They have offered interest bearing accounts with debit cards in the past.
I never really understood that. Maybe it’s some sort of self-limiting thing? Like if your teenager is allowed to buy stuff off of eBay, but you only let them have access to the Paypal account itself and then control how much they spend by how much you transfer into the account from your bank account?
That’s probably not it. I dunno, maybe people would rather go through Paypal as a third party instead of setting a transfer directly from their bank account? Like I said, I never really understood the point.
Danceswithcats’ theory sounds more plausable than mine.
PayPal is instant transfer. Most buyers and sellers on eBay prefer it, as opposed to waiting 3-5 days for a money order to arrive, etc. What does your bank charge for wire transfers? Probably more than PayPal.
I still have my PP acount before a bank account was required, just a CC. I kept it this way.
I opened a paypal account very recently to pay for my first ebay purchase. They did not require a bank account, just said they would prefer one as they can then verify who I am. The seller of the item wanted me to do it with my bank account because aparently to receive money from cc transactions requires a payment to paypal to register the account or some such. I refused and just used my cc. I do not trust access to my bank accounts online! At least with a cc purchase I am covered in case of anything funny showing up on my statement. My bank account does not have the same protection.
I ran into this same problem, but the eBay seller refused to work with me unless my Paypal account was verified with the bank account. Whatever. So far, no problems.
What is confusing Ultraviolet and me is why Paypal has an option to transfer money from your personal credit cards and bank account into a seperate special PayPal account. It seems redundant. The money transfers just as quickly whether you have a dedicated PayPal account or simply use PayPal to mediate the transfer from your credit card to the seller. Unless, as you suggest, the dedicated PayPal account is tied in to the PayPal credit/debit card they were offering. Still can’t see what the real point is, though.
Paypal isn’t just for buyers but for sellers, too. When you receive payment, where do you want it to go? It’s also good accounting principal – money always goes into and out of accounts. If there’s a middle man, it transfers in and out of the middle man’s accounts.
I did all my xmas shopping this year on ebay, quite successfully. I was never even tempted to connect to my bank account.
When prompted to by Paypal, it would ‘verify’ my address, what dreck, I did a little checking and found a site where everyone was unhappy with Paypal for one reason or another. But the people who were really in a rage were people who had been verified only to have Paypal take funds from their accounts that they were still fighting to get back.
It was enough for me, I am still not ‘verified’.
In fact, for one of my purchases they ‘accidently’ put it through 10 times! Yes, you read that right, then froze all the ccards that had been affected by the glitch. I received notice my card might not work until they got it straightened out, in a week to ten days.
Was it finally straightened out? Yes, in two weeks. After several frustrating long distance calls.
Did it affect my ccard? Yes, it was unusable the whole time.
Would I give them access to my bank account? Not on your life.