Fuck you, PayPal fees
Fuck you, Paypal. You’re not my fucking pal.
There are many, many reasons to be pissed off at PayPal. Today however I'm going to talk about one particular reason: its fees.
You see, I'm a freelancer, and I often receive payments through PayPal. The trouble is that PayPal charge me a fee whenever someone sends me money through the evil Pay for goods or services option:
PayPal's fees aren't transparent
If you try to find out how much PayPal charges you to receive money, you might read that it's 2.9% + $0.30. But this isn't accurate – not for me at least. This is because that's the fee in the US. The fee in the UK is higher: 3.4% + 20p.
Okay, so PayPal charges 3.4% + 20p. Got it. Except yesterday I received $150 Canadian dollars from a client in Canada and PayPal charged me $6.90. Wait a minute – that’s a fee of 4.6%! (6.9/150).
Why was this particular fee so high? Well, I did some research and came across the term “cross-border payment”. According to https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/cross-border-and-conversion-fees, payments between countries are more expensive than payments within countries. The fee for payments from Canada to the UK is 3.9% + $0.30.
Hang on, this still doesn't make sense. 3.9% of $150 is $5.85. Add 30 cents and you've got a fee of $6.15. Yet PayPal charged me $6.90, which is more than $6.15.
So what calculation is PayPal using here? I’m not even angry, I only feel a detached curiosity, like a scientist picking apart a tapeworm.
I asked PayPal about it and they send me this reply:
The base fee is 3.4% + $0.30 CAD plus 1% Cross Border fee Thus, $6.90 CAD was deducted from the money you received.
So, just to clear things up, PayPal applied three fees to the payment: a variable base fee of 3.4%, a fixed base fee of $0.30 and a 1% cross border fee. And I had to contact them to find this out. PayPal claims its fees are transparent but in fact it's entirely the opposite.
How can PayPal even charge a fee in the first place?
It pisses me off that PayPal even charges a fee at all. My bank never charges me a fee when someone sends me money. So why does PayPal charge me? They are probably sitting on billions of dollars of money that is just lying around in people's account. Surely they could make a profit instead by lending some the money out as banks do, or by putting all the money into an interest-bearing account or something.
What annoys m more is that PayPal even slaps on its cheeky fee when someone sends me money from their own PayPal account. There's no debit card, credit card or bank account involved. Money is just being sent from one PayPal account to another. All that's happening is that PayPal is changing ones and zeroes in its own system. So what justification does PayPal have for charging a fee in this case? How can PayPal justify charging 2.9% + $0.30 just to move money from one of its own accounts to another?
I think PayPal gets away with it because they have a monopoly on the online payments industry. Okay, there are other competitors, like Skrill and Venmo, but who actually uses these?
PayPal charges a 2.5% currency conversion fee and doesn't make this fee clear
Let's say I want to convert the CAD$150 my client sent me into euros or pounds.
For this, we need PayPal’s currency conversion service. PayPal can convert money between 23 currencies. However, it's at a price. According to https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/cross-border-and-conversion-fees, PayPal's currency conversion fee is “2.5% above the wholesale exchange rate.”
I tried converting CAD$100 just now with PayPal to see what kind of fee I'd get. Well, the fee was 0.97% (PayPal offered £58.15 GBP, whereas today's interbank exchange is £59.89, and £58.15/£59.89 = 0.97%.) That's... actually not bad. It's a lot less than 2.5% at least.
However, I've found a much cheaper way to convert currencies: Revolut. This is a new German bank. You can open an account online from anywhere in Europe and you can convert between euros, pounds and American dollars for free. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Null. It really is revolutionary. Unfortunately, though Canadian dollars aren’t yet included, which means I'm stuck with PayPal's currency conversion fees for now.
Alternatives to PayPal
Although I just said that PayPal has a monopoly on the online payments industry, there are actually viable alternatives to PayPal.
Let’s go back to the client who sent me $150. We saw that PayPal hit me with a 4.6% fee for this payment.
One alternative I had was asking my client to send me the money by bank transfer to my Canadian bank. (That's right, I have a Canadian bank account.) Then I would have transferred the money out of my Canadian bank to one of my UK banks.
Actually, I do this already with some of my other clients. The last amount I transferred was CAD$1862.50 and I received £1,075.08. From these figures, we can calculate that my Canadian bank charged me a fee of 4.1% to transfer my money from Canada to the UK. (According to this site, 1 CAD was worth 0.6017 GBP on the day I transferred the money. With that exchange rate, I would have received £1120.67. However, I only received only 95.9% of that amount, which means the bank charged me a fee of 4.1%).
4.1% is still high, but not as high as PayPal’s fee of 4.6%. Plus you have to keep in mind that PayPal hasn’t even converted the Canadian dollars into pounds yet.
Summary
- A client paid me via PayPal yesterday. PayPal took 4.6% from the payment, which I thought was quite a large fee. I tried to discover the fee calculation but I couldn't. In the end I had to contact PayPal's customer services to find out how they calculated the fee.
- PayPal charges a fee for any business-related transaction, even if the client or buyer pays via bank transfer or with their own PayPal account. You would think these transactions would be free as they don't cost PayPal anything.
- I recommend using Revolut instead of PayPal when exchanging between euros, pounds and American dollars as Revolut doesn't charge any currency conversion fees.
Comments
2017-12-24 Doghouse Cat
BUNCH OF LIARS like their ass buddy, SHITbay. Both these jerk off's WASTE peoples' time on very stressful tech problems (no doubt on purpose) and shady, shady, shady. Ebay won't even let you cancel your account! And shitpal's multi order shipping is so error rigged it doesn't actually work!!!!!
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2018-01-11 Wayne Melnychuk
I have money pending in my paypal from a buyer, he picked up the item, demanded a refund from the paypal he chose to pay which included shipping and even though he offered cash and said he left feedback on his end, I have to wait until the funds get released. Trouble is after 30 days it gets refunded to the buyer and he already has the item. I've emailed them 3x already.
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2018-01-28 Iwantmymoneyback
Thank you for writing this. The exact thing just happened to me. I'm freelancing and checked my balance only to see that PP had taken $10 in fees from the last two clients. Even though they're also making money off my PayPal balance?! Greedy fucks. Thankfully all these greedy institutions taking fees left and right are being side swept by entrepreneurial apps. It's only a matter of time. Although they did just buy out Venmo, sigh. Fuck you PayPal!!!!!!!
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2018-03-09 Dang Thanh Vinh
me too! i never want use paypal anymore!
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2018-04-24 Dave H
They have suspended the account linked to my Ebay account for "suspicious activity", which upon calling them, turns out to be me updating the expired card that was registered and updating my password at the same time; I can update my password by them calling my home phone number to verify and I can verify who I am when speaking to them, but I can only reactivate my account with "photo ID that is less than 6 months old", which I don't have. Needless to say I'm not renewing my passport to satisfy these clowns, I've tried to resolve this in a reasonable manner, but they simply couldn't care less. Their loss; I'll just use something else.
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2018-05-11 Greg
"My bank never charges me a fee when someone sends me money. So why does PayPal charge me?" Because your bank invests the money on your account. Actually, it can invest at least 10 times the money you lend them. There's the real money in this. PayPal is not a bank, so it has to charge for it. I also don't like PayPal for two reasons: 1. It's not that reliable. A friend of mine collected payments from about 5000 people at a conference in Central Europe, and a few payments just never made it. 2. You can be scammed out of your money. After you got your money, the buyer can get it back from PayPal, which gets deducted from you. Scammers use this on tutors when they ask you to pay the "driver" of their "son" you never meet. They send the money on paypal, and after you've given them the money in person, they claim it back.
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2018-05-12 Paul Jones
“My bank never charges me a fee when someone sends me money. So why does PayPal charge me?” "Because your bank invests the money on your account. Actually, it can invest at least 10 times the money you lend them. There’s the real money in this. PayPal is not a bank, so it has to charge for it." But surely PayPal can invest our money too?
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2018-05-16 david
Fuck you paypal I was cared international fee for eBay customer that is a US customer confirmed by eBay. Paypal still won;t give me back the money they stole from me. Fuck You
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2018-05-26 MrL0G1C
4.6% I wish my fees were that low. I just tried to send a friends & family payment of $1.03 The Paypal Fee? $1.03 What the fuck? Unfortunately I don't know of any money transferrers that charge low fees globally. All of a sudden crypto-currencies are starting to look a little more appealing. But they are still difficult to get hold of AFAIK and I am vehemently against the wastefulness of the completely unnecessary and arbitrary amounts of 'mining' needed, it should be illegal.
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2019-04-02 Ebor Editing - Ginevra
Thanks for explaining why I'm haemoraging hundreds of pounds to these bastards when I accept payment from international clients as a freelance proofreader. I've just opened a TransferWise account - https://transferwise.com They set you up with bank accounts in the UK, the EU, the US, Australia and NZ, which people can use to pay into in the local currency. I paid 3.10 euros on a transfer and conversion of 942 euros the other day, which I think is pretty amazing. Actually, I even made a profit, as the pound dropped against the euro since the invoice was issued, but that's another matter... My Italian client was thrilled not to have to pay a fee, and said the payment process was really straightforward. TransferWise also told me that people in Turkey, Brazil etc. can sign up for accounts and make online payments to other countries but I don't have any clients that have done this yet. But I'm looking forward to trying it out with Turkish clients, who currently have to use intermediaries in Europe to make international transfer. Best of all they're really clear and open about the fees, telling you what they'll be before you make a conversion. And they use the Google conversion rate, no sneaky 2.5% cut on the transfer. I'm telling all my proofreading friends about it. I seriously rate it.
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2019-04-04 Paul Jones
I need a way to receive Canadian dollars though and TransferWise can't do that. You can only receive money in AUD, EUR, GBP & USD.
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2019-10-02 Norm
Paypals fuck you song, .........By Namron Mahpu.... fuck you paypal fuck you,. fuck you and the horse that you rode in on, you're a bunch of fucking assholes that just need some reaming out..so fuck you paypal fuck you, come on pay pal,Hey, Hey, what do you say, I'm not the only one around the world that's crucifying you today, you're nothing more than HIGHWAY ROBBERS AND ONE DAY YOU'RE GONNA PAY, oh remember 1966 in the lunchroom that day, it blew out all the widows , hey,hey. the chords C,F,G ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. I ordered a leaf spring from AT Racing world-usa , they dropped shipped it to PROCOMP ELECTRONICS INC. lost in the mail..got a refund promptly.ordered it again Aug 14 ..........sept 17,2019,.. delivery guy shows up with an empty box and now those fuckers at pp have the gaul to ask for a police report which I had to pay $40.00 to the R.C.M.P. to send them... I phone the next day ask if they received it.. they said they had and were going to put it on my file.... then my case was denied , because I had not supplied them with the police report, I phoned back the guy said, there is no police report on your file, send me the file again and gave an address in San Jose to send my hard copies to. I phoned today to find out if they had received my police file ... yes they had received it and they were going to reopen my file. 15 fucking days of 7 to 8 hrs. a day, phoning, emailing, and generally making the most amount of noise I could muster. 71 years of age on oct.22 and 5 heart attacks later....... bunch of fuckers anyway. anybody out there know anything about planting a virus into their main frame, to shut their system down ?? Well now I can't call you honey ,cause you stole all of my money- fuck you fuck you paypal You've got a bunch of mistomeaners , cause you're all such fucking weiners, Yeah fuck you paypal fuck you.
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2019-10-05 Namron Mahpu
chords CFG C7 Fuck you pay pal Gimme my money back !!.. song by Namron Mahpu inspiration, fuckers @ pay pal C.............................................F..............C.....................................G..........................C.............................................................................F................. Ya say, you don't like my language & you say, that I am impolite, and then you make up all these crazy rules--- you just pull 'em outta ................................C............................................G.....................C........C.................................................................F........................... you ass. Between me and you I think you're looking for a fight,/ cause whatever information you had asked for ,... I gave. ............C.............................................................................G...........................C...................C7..........F............................................................C.... You make a pile of shit up & then you steal my money,/ I gave you more than enough information , you're just too fucking lazy to .............G.........................C..................................F.............................................................C...........................................G................................ look it up & bother checking it out,-----/ reopen my file, get off you ass you lazy pay pal fuckers, Yeah, get off you ass and gimme all ........C..................................C........................C7..........................F.......................................................................C.........................................G...... my money back,...all you greasy pay pal fuckers that just must be strung out on crack, I'm talking to you , you greasy pay pal fuckers ..................................C... Gimme my money back. ..C.............................F............................................C.........................G...................................C...C7...............................F...................................C.. Well don't ya just know,... Hey that I told you so... Just awhile ago...ya know I told ya so. Don't ya lean on me too hard, I've had 5 ........................................................G........................................................F.........................G.................................................................................... heart attacks so far, so really pay pal if you'd like to push it any further, I could charge all you coorporate assholes with attempted ...C...... murder. ..C..............................................F....................C......................................................G................................C..............................C7........................ So, fuck you,.... fuck you pay pal .... fuck you and the horse that you rode in on. You've got a bunch of mistomeaners, cause you're ..F......................................................C...............G............C........C.....F.....................................C........................................................................C..... all such fucking weiners , so fuck you , fuck you pay pal. Well i can't call you Pal and most wouldn't call you honey, cause all you do all .................................G......................................C...........................................................................F........................................................C............... over the world is steal peoples money,... You're all a pile of fucking assholes that just need some reaming out , so fuck you pay pal ..........G...............................C.........C..............................F.......................C.................................................................................................. fuck you , fuck you, fuck you. Ah, come on pay pal what do ya say, I'm not the only one in this ole world who's crucifying ........G.......................C.............................................................F..................................................C............................G......................C...... you today. You're just a bunch of pirate scum and one day you're gonna pay...... fuck you pay pal, fuck you, fuck you today. ......................F........................................C........................................................................................G..............C.............................C7................... Somebody please just plant a stink BOMB and let all those pay pal fuckers, feel right at home, let it stink up all their lives, throw in .........................F......................................................................C...........................G............C some Poison Ivy and the hives....everybody sing fuck you pay pal , fuck you,fuck you C...............F...........................................................C & now remember boys and girls , it's just a song, so fuck you pay pal and for now......... so long, fuck you
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2019-12-01 Reuben
Fuck paypal fuck you pieces of fuckin shit I had 100 dollars sent to me and recieved 64 fucking dollars a day before thanksgiving and when I tried to take my remaining money out they fucking locked my account due to suspicious activity wtf I was trying to transfer my 64 dollars to a paypal fucking debit card because I didn't want it on the fucking paypal account so when I added that card in order to transfer it i got fucking locked out and a full lockout I couldn't even recieve send or use google pay nor my bank and so I fucking waited to after thanksgiving and sent my identification and proper documents and I'm still fuckinv locked out fuck pay pal hope you all fucking die !!!
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2019-12-24
Fuck you paypal! Never again. I’m rolling around in attics probably getting cancer and your stealing 100 dollars of my money. Fuck you!
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