Hi. I am a verified paypal member and I have being purchasing items
online through paypal for quite some time now. I recently received my
first payment through my new Website only to find that I cannot
withdraw the money I received to either my credit card or my bank
account. This is because firstly paypal cannot credit your credit card
from received payments and secondly I'm an Irish citizen with an Irish
bank account and Ireland is not on their list of countries that paypal
can accept a bank account from.
I know there is online sites that let you open a US bank account but
not only is this expensive but also because I receive payments in
Euro, I would have to deposit into the US bank account in dollars and
then when I wire the money back to my Irish account it would have to
be changed back to Euro. There would be nothing left! So this is not
an option. Changing my payment processor from paypal to something else
is also not an option. I'm looking for ideas here, put yourself in my
position and try to come up with a cheap alternative! Thanks for your
help and please don't hesitate in requesting clarification.

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Request for Question Clarification by hedgie-ga on 30 Jul 2003 03:09 PDT

You may have to open another electronic transfer
 service, one which has global scope, then paypal
 your funds into it, then withdraw from it.
 There would be some extra cost,
 but less then a bank  account in the US.
 
 Would suggestion of a specific transfer service be an answer?

 Other alternative is to find a friend/pen-pal in the US.
 You would have to use another vehicle than Google Answer
 (which is anonymous) for that.
 Depending on the yearly volume you may have to consider tax aspect
 of such transfers.

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Request for Question Clarification by taxmama-ga on 30 Jul 2003 16:39 PDT

Hi Philbert

One of my readers is using a service that is a payment processor 
and shopping cart combined. They accept money from all over the world.
They are very happy with these people.

Here's what they say about paying you:

>>Suppliers with United States or Canadian Bank accounts will have payments 
electronically deposited directly to any bank account at no cost. 

Suppliers without a US Bank account can have their payments air mailed at 
no charge or have the option of an international wire payment. Fees for an 
International wire start at $36 and go down $3 for every hundred dollars 
in net sales. <<

While there is a one-time charge of $49 to set up, there are no monthly fees.
Their per transaction charge is $US 0.45 and they charge a Transaction Amount 
of 5.5% . (That is more than PayPal)

Maybe if you don't have to pay for the merchant account and shopping cart,
you'd be willing to consider this as a PayPal alternative?

Let me know and I'll get you the link.

Best wishes,

Your TaxMama-ga

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Clarification of Question by philbert-ga on 30 Jul 2003 23:47 PDT

Yes Hedgie please post as answer including as much detail as you can. Thanks.

Questions concerning international payments, payments to countries
 not  on the paypal list have appeared several times on Google Answers.  
 Reviewing previous answers may be worthwhile:
--------------------------------
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=226379
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=194672

You may also have a peek at the past e-commerce answers:
    http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=search&catid=1104
____________________________

 Now to specific suggestions:

The following service has been around for a while :
         "e-gold is the only tangibly backed, worldwide electronic
monetary/payments system. e-gold is 100% backed by physical gold"

http://www.e-gold.com/   

Most such services will accept money from Pay-Pal,  This one is
explicitly advertising:
       "fund an e-gold account with money from your Paypal account,
        all major credit cards and some debit cards."
http://www.fundgold.com/?src=gaw   

This suggests another possibility:
  Obtain a PayPal debit card. That should be easy since you have a
  balance in your PayPal account. Insert the card into an ATM 
  anywhere, and out comes local currency.  Here is PayPal's ad:

  "Introducing the PayPal ATM/Debit Card
   Withdraw cash from your PayPal account at ATMs!
   The new PayPal ATM/Debit Card makes your PayPal account better than 
   ever. Best of all, the PayPal ATM/Debit Card is free!"
 http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/acc/dc_intro-outside

This is the most straightforward solution..
I have tested this and it works without a U.S. bank
account on file with PayPal. USDs are converted to 
local currency at reasonable  version of the current rate.


SEARCH TERMS
e-gold      (When you enter this into Google search engine,
                 you will see on the right sponsored links
                  advertising such services:.
    Or, just click on this link for the search results:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=e-gold

international e-payments , PayPal alternatives


  godd luck

hedgie

It sound as if you will be able to withdraw money to Ireland by early 2004
http://www.paypaldev.org/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2344

Have you checked with PayPal to see if you're eligible for their debit card? 
--Missy

No but id imagine you would have to live in the US for that. Still
though ill check it out, thanks.

To avoid the round trip conversion from euros to dollars to euros,
perhaps you could open a bank account in a country that uses the euro
and is one where PayPal will deposit to a bank account.  Possibilities
are Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and
Spain.

Source for countries that use the euro:

http://www.euro.ecb.int/en/what/countries.html

Source for countries where PayPal will deposit:

http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_help-ext&eloc=217&loc=216&unique_id=03969&source_page=_home&flow=

--efn

Opening bank accounts in the EU is not as easy as it used to be. Money
laundering regs.

I recently opened a couple of business accounts with a bank that was
already running with 4 other accounts. The bank took over a week. It
said it had to satisfy the FSA requirements. (That's the UK for you.)