Paypal for money transfers?

[Oregonkiwi]

I've been looking into different methods of getting cash from the US to NZ. I asked at my bank today about wire transfer fees and the helpful bank teller suggested Paypal as a cheaper option. It looks promising, seems to be free except for the 2.5 % currency conversion fee, and easy since we already have 2 Paypal accounts. So, has anyone else used Paypal for international money transfers?

[Charlosparky]

hi there, dont have any answers but just come here from ebay and i think they also have a forum, if you find an answer on there let us know

[jubjub]

Not really sure how it would work for large amounts, but we have accepted and made payments in other currencies without any hassle when we did ebay.

[Oregonkiwi]

Thanks. After I posted that last night I started looking at xe.com which is probably a better option for larger amounts, I was just curious if anyone had used Paypal to transfer money to themselves.

[Smiler]

Oregonkiwi

We are now using PP for some of our customers, particularly in the US.

We found the bank heavy on the currency conversion fee when the clients send us US $ checks and not many people in the US seem to cope with (or even heard of) bank transfer. Our last PP fee was 3.8% to accept money, which is the highest fee.

It is all declared here on our accounts and we leave it in the PP account and pay for goods or services in US$. We have just started using a design artist there and it's an easy and hassle free way of paying them and it is working for us.

I use it all the time for eBay. I have my own PP account attached to my Uk credit card.

We haven't transferred money from PP to NZ accounts though.

[KitchNerd]

Hi Simler

I have been using Paypal to transfer monies to my NZ bank account for 2 years now, very easy and very cheap. I've been transfering amounts from £10 to £1000 as long as your the Paypal account registered to your NZ bank account is verified there is no limit.

It costs $0.50 to tranfer any amount, better than £9 (HSBC).

Setting up the account with my NZ bank account was a bit tricky to start with as you need a NZ bank account and address, if you have a friend or famliy in NZ then its easy.

So to claifiy: UK paypal = uk bank account/CCard/Dcard, NZ Paypal = NZ Bank Account

PS: you don't need to have a Ebay account to use Paypal

Hope this helps,

KitchNerd

[sarahw]

Yep we've used Paypal to transfer money between UK, USA and NZ for the last couple of years & it works.

Other thing you could do is to transfer the money in US$ to your account in NZ & then they do the conversion (we were offered this but from UK$ to NZ$ if it was going to be better for us - we didn't take it up in the end - we plumped for the UK bank to do this) - don't know if the rates are as good or if the charges are high for doing this - might be something worth looking into though.