Wire transfer to PayPal needs PayPal ABA routing number

[fjados]

Hi!

From abroad, I would like to instruct my bank to deposit a thousand dollars into my PayPal account,

but the bank needs an ABA routing number for the receiving account, yes?

[angelleye · Accepted solution]

PayPal doesn't work that way.  It's not a true checking account in that sense and you can't do ACH transfers directly with it.

What you'll need to do is add your bank account to your PayPal account through your PayPal account profile.  Once that's done and verified you'll be able to deposit funds into PayPal from the bank account, but again, you'll do that through your PayPal account as opposed to running it through your bank as a wire transfer.

[fjados]

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@angelleye wrote:

PayPal doesn't work that way...

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Pity. I was hoping that the announced split beween PayPal and eBay

would make PayPal a more mainstream financial services company.

[angelleye]

They are already pretty mainstream.  They are the most popular online payment system and now you can use them at point of sale retail locations all over the country.  

Getting money into the PayPal account from a bank is very easy.  You just have to pull from the bank rather than pushing to PayPal from the bank.  Is that really that big of a deal?

[fjados]

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@angelleye wrote:

They are already pretty mainstream...

...pull from the bank rather than pushing to PayPal from the bank.  

Is that really that big of a deal?

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Thank you; yes; Payless has finally condescended to accept PayPal!

The "big deal" is linking the bank account, and it has to be a US bank.

If I'm visiting Chile, and have money at Banco de Chile,

I would love to instruct that bank to wire over some money, ad hoc.

I do have a US bank, but that account is shared with my wife,

and I don't want to ruffle her feathers, from afar!

[angelleye]

If you have all the info necessary to open a bank account in the US you could just create another one that is not shared with anybody and use that with your PayPal account.  

[fjados]

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@angelleye wrote:

...open a bank account in the US ... not shared with anybody

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Right. Technically, you are right.

But, from a family politics perspective, that doesn't seem wise to me.

I hope some family therapist in PayPal's Board Room, soon,

brings up the marketing advantage of catering to the more tribally-oriented among us.

[rpsabq]

i'll say it again - IF I HAD A BANK ACCOUNT WHY THE **bleep** WOULD I NEED PAYPAL??   Paypal is good for ebay.  That's it.

[angelleye]

1. If you are taking payments online you will save money on transaction fees using PayPal over any other bank.  I have actually done extensive research on this.  The only time you will save money with a traditional bank / merchant account is if you are taking a vast majority of card-preset (physical swipe or chip read) transactions.
2. If you are taking payments online and you do not have PayPal included as an option for people to use if they want to, you will lose out on sales.  This is a proven fact over many years of testing by PayPal as well as 3rd parties like myself and many, many others.  Typically, adding PayPal to your checkout will increase your conversion rates by 20%.
3. Adding PayPal alone allows people with or without PayPal accounts to pay.  It's free, and you can install a payment button within minutes. 
4. If you do require more traditional, direct credit card processing options on your site PayPal has many different versions of this, so there is nothing you cannot do with PayPal that you can do with a traditional bank / merchant account.
5. Per #2, if you are going to add PayPal to your website and take payments that way to increase your sales, then it's nice to also have all your credit card payments fall into that same merchant account.  This saves time (money) with bookkeeping because there is only a single account to reconcile.  Depending on the size of your business and the number of transactions you are running per day this could be a big cost savings in the time involved with reconciling accounts.
6. Per #5, the same can be said if you are selling on eBay (which you mentioned) and you are taking PayPal payments anyway.
7. PayPal provides tools like IPN which allow programmers to automate tasks based on different types of transactions.  For example, you can automatically update your database, send out branded email notifications, post things on social networks, etc. any time a payment comes through, or a refund happens, or a customer files a payment dispute, etc.  The power behind this is endless, and can save huge on time involved with manual processing of order data.  Most "bank accounts" do not offer such a service at all, and if they do they will charge you for it.  With PayPal this is free.

Shall I go on?  😉

[fjados]

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@angelleye wrote:

Shall I go on?  😉

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Um, that ABA finesse is still out of reach, huh?