Here is a quick tip on how to save paying PayPal fees. I was sending a large amount of euros today, and this would have resulted in about €50 of fees. So I did a bit of poking around and came across this tip, with this method it brought it down the fees to €30.
The stipulation for this to work is that you need to have either a Premier or a Business account. There is a feature called MassPay on Paypal where if you wanted to send multiple payments, you can simply upload a CSV file with the email address, the cash amount and the currency. The fees here are much less, and there is just a flat fee charge of 2%. Here is what you need to do :
- open up notepad
- enter in person@email.com <tab> cashvalue <tab> currency code (USD / EUR/ etc)
- for multiple payments you can enter the same as 2 , on the next line
- save as ASCII .TXT file.
- login to paypal and find the mass pay link at the bottom of the page
- click make Mass Payment on the left hand side of the info page
- fill out the form, and identify people with email address when asked.
- click review, do a review and see the fees.
- Click send and save some fees !
Paypal Fee Savings
For example if you wanted to send someone exactly €1000, it would typically cost you 3.4% plus €0.35 for the transaction charge so you would need to send an extra €35.56 . With Mass pay this would be the flat 2% or €20. Also what is nice with this method, you don’t need to calculate what you should pay someone via paypal so they get €1000, rather you would have the CSV file person@email.com 1000 EUR
So not only does it save you a few quid, the payee doesn’t see the unusual €1035.36 transaction, and a fee charge, rather just get an entry for the whole €1000.
It obviously works for smaller amounts, so it depends on whether you want to spend the extra few steps to save cash. I always think, better in your pocket than someone else’s !
