Withdrawing money from Paypal to bank question.

[Alper_A]

The other day I linked my bank account with my Paypal account via the two random deposits and it took 2 days for the deposits to appear in my bank account. I succesfully linked my Paypal account with my bank account and withdrew a small amount just to see how it would go. It took once again, two days for the money to appear in my bank account. Now on June 18th, I withdrew a greater amount to my bank account but it still hasn't showed up. My question is, was I just lucky that it took two days for the money to show up the on the two occasions? I've read that it takes 3-5 business days and was surprised that it had showed up in two.

[snowshoe]

Assuming you have a US Account, the times vary anywhere from 1 to 4 days.  We average 2, once in a while 3.

Here's some details that go on behind the scenes:

There's 3 parties involved with PayPal bank transfers, PayPal, the ACH network and your Bank.  The ACH network or Automated Clearing House is an electronic network for financial transactions in the United States.  ACH processes large volumes of credit and debit transactions in batches.  When you authorize a withdraw, PayPal will then pass that data to the ACH network which in turn will pass the data to your Bank.  Your Bank will then process the request and pass the data back to the ACH network which in turn will pass the data to PayPal.  Because the ACH network operates only on banking days (not on banking holidays), PayPal settles at 7 PM the night before each banking day: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 7 PM. Payment submitted Thursday after 7 PM are not sent for settlement until Sunday at 7 PM. If Monday is a banking holiday, then payments are sent for settlement on Monday at 7 PM.  Note, as the transactions are done in batches, this can add additional time to the process, each bank has their own schedules too which is why some transfers may take longer than others.