A Review Of Paypal From International Users

We have received several comments about using Paypal as a means to transfer money and there have been several areas that have been found to cause problems for international users. Whilst it has a fabulous reputation partly due to the success of Ebay and the exposure it has gained through companies such as Amazon it is considered by many as a very ineffective method of transferring money overseas or just just for more regular money transfers particularly for international users in countries such as Malaysia and other South East Asian countries.

A genuine online freelance worker, a none resident of America claims that you may not see your money as an international user. Having decided to use this payment option as requested by overseas clients in order to finalize the details on a project and to secure payment efficiently, expecting that Paypal would certainly help them receive their money in the event of a problem. 

After following the straight forward registration process, providing personal details, email address and so on it all seemed simple enough and the freelancer was looking forward to receiving their payment with no problems. This is where things started to get a little frustrating for them.

The first problem was verification. Apparently you need a US/UK account in order to verify yourself and in order receive payments to an account. Clearly not having a US bank account or credit card made things more than a bit difficult. After investigating the possibility of opening a US account from abroad they decided to pass on that option being as it would cost them $299 US just to set-up the account. After providing and verifying a bank account they were still unable to transfer money overseas to their actual bank account.

The next problem was the money transfer limit which applies to unverified accounts which is a mere $100. This also ran over to transferring money overseas to other people. The sending limit was $100 also, so having to pay someone $70 suddenly meant they were unable to pay anyone else any significant amount.

So, finding themselves in the position of not being able to withdraw and get their hands on the money or send a decent amount to anyone else became a rather large problem for them. Eventually they decided to in stages to transfer money to a Friend in the US who then made as made a money transfer via iKobo back to them. All in all a very unsatisfying experience for them. A real hassle not least of which the user was struggling for money to support a family, far from ideal.

I guess the real lesson here is  and this is especially true for international users of money transfer companies: read the small print and make sure you are 100% sure that this is the correct company for you to send money with.