Sometimes, for some fucking reason, people pay me in Canadian dollars to a British PayPal account. And then, for another fucking stupid reason, I need to convert these Canadian dollars into euros.

Thankfully, the solution to this problem is easy: PayPal lets me convert Canadian dollars to Euros, or indeed any other currency, for just a small fee.

However, I recently discovered a better option. There's a banking app called Revolut that converts currencies for free. THEY CONVERT CURRENCIES FOR FREE. Just in case you didn't get that, it's FUCKING FREE.

So surely I should send my Canadian dollars to Revolut and convert them to euros there? Unfortunately, it's not that easy. A year and a half ago, I found out that Revolut didn't accept top-ups in Canadian dollars yet. In fact, you could only top up a Revolut account with three currencies: euros, British pounds and American dollars.

But has anything changed since then? This Revolut page seems to imply that you can now top up with more than three currencies.

So, I set out to see if I could transfer my Canadian dollars from PayPal to Revolut.

Sending Canadian dollars from a British PayPal account to Revolut – not possible

If you try to link a bank account to PayPal, whether it's a Revolut account or otherwise, you'll have two options: to link the account as a card or a bank account.

When I tried to add my Revolut as a card to my British PayPal account, I kept getting the error:

We're sorry, we're not able to process your request right now. Please try again later.

I might have been able to add Revolut as a bank account, but PayPal wanted me to enter a UK address as my billing address, but Revolut has my Spanish address instead. So that was a no-go.

Sending Canadian dollars from a Spanish PayPal account to Revolut – not possible

Unlike my British PayPal account, my Spanish PayPal account let me add Revolut to it as a withdrawal method. That's because the Spanish version of Paypal lets you enter a bank account as an IBAN, whereas the UK version of PayPal is more limited because you can only enter bank accounts with a UK sort code and account number.

So now I had to send the $1000 from my British PayPal account to my Spanish PayPal account, and then from there, send it to my Revolut account, where I could finally convert it to Euros.

My first problem was that PayPal wanted to charge me $3.25 for transferring the money from my British PayPal account to my Spanish PayPal account. It's almost as though PayPal could sense what I was trying to do and it was trying to stop me, like a cat that realises I'm about to drown it. PayPal is like the monster in a horror film that just keeps coming back, no matter how hard you try to kill it.

So I accepted the fee. Not long thereafter, the $1,000 landed in my Spanish PayPal account. So far, so good.

But when I tried to withdraw the money to my Revolut account, PayPal, ever the sneaky bastard, tried to convert the Canadian dollars into euros first!

And of course, during the conversion, PayPal slaps on its cheeky €20 conversion fee. There was no way to tell PayPal to send the money in Canadian dollars instead. Well, I wasn't having any of that so I contacted customer support. I wrote them this message:

Hola,

I will write in English as it's easier for me.

I have a Revolut account as a withdrawal method and I want to withdraw Canadian dollars to this Revolut account. However, when I try to do this, PayPal converts the Canadian dollars into Euros. Is there a way to stop this from happening? I want to be able to send Canadian dollars to my Revolut account.

Paul

I received an automated reply, so I sent the message again. After some back and forth with PayPal representatives, I finally got this information:

Le confirmo que cada que vez que retire fondos de su saldo a la cuenta bancaria, por regulaciones financieras PayPal va realizar la retira de los fondos el saldo euro unicamente.

The part in bold translates to "Due to financial regulations, PayPal only allows clients to withdraw money in euros."

So withdrawing Canadian dollars from a Spanish PayPal account to a Revolut account isn't possible. I suspect it would be the same for a British PayPal account.

Sending Canadian dollars from a Canadian PayPal account to Revolut – not possible

Next, I tried to connect my Revolut account to a Canadian PayPal account.

I can't link Revolut to my Canadian PayPal account as a bank account

Remember that if you try to link a bank account to PayPal, whether it's a Revolut account or otherwise, you'll have two options: to link the account as a card or a bank account.

If you want to add Revolut as a bank account, Canadian PayPal will ask you for your "Bank Transit Number" and "Institution Number", both of which are unique to Canada I believe.

You won't be able to supply these though because Revolut only gives you an IBAN and BIC. Here's the screen in the Revolut app that tells you where to send the money to:

So linking Revolut as a bank account to a Canadian PayPal account is out of the question.

I can't link Revolut to my Canadian PayPal account as a card

Next I tried adding my Revolut card to PayPal. I entered all my details: card number, expiry date, security code and billing address. But when I clicked submit, PayPal spat out this message:

It's like trying to feed broccoli to a baby, but the baby spits it out as if to say, "Yuck! I don't like it."

I don't know why exactly I got this message, Perhaps it's because I had to give a Canadian address for the billing address and Revolut has a Spanish address for my billing address. So the addresses don't match basically.

Conclusion

It looks like I'll have to continue to use PayPal to convert my Canadian dollars. Fucking PayPal. Just another reason to hate them.