moving a business to another country

[seanpt]

Hello,

 We're planning on moving overseas after establishing a business in Australia - I run an online business from home that sells services with paypal subscriptions. I've read (and been told) that our only option is to close our Australian paypal account and open up a new overseas paypal account as we will no longer have an address in Australia. The problem is that closing the existing account means cancelling around 4000 monthly subscribers, which will cost us (and you paypal!) a lot of money. Is there really no alternative? 

[kernowlass]

Paypal is country specific with differing banking regs per country.

So if you move country you have to open another paypal account in that country and attach that countries financial info ie bank account / cards to it.

You are allowed to keep your Australian one open as well.

[seanpt]

"Paypal is country specific with differing banking regs per country."

Yes I know that, although my bank will happily let me update my address details to be overseas, as has my UK bank account.

"So if you move country you have to open another paypal account in that country and attach that countries financial info ie bank account / cards to it."

I can't do that as you are only allowed one business account and one personal account.

"You are allowed to keep your Australian one open as well."

With an invalid postal address and an invalid phone number?

There must be something in place to migrate accounts internationally- there has to be some level of support that can do this - what happens with mergers and acquisitions - what if I sell my business to a company in the US - do they have to then keep up an Australian business address and phone number for the rest of time because they can't move the account without deleting 4000 active subscriptions? If that is the case then I guess we will have to bite the bullet and move everything over to bitcoin.

[kernowlass · Accepted solution]

Yes I know that, although my bank will happily let me update my address details to be overseas, as has my UK bank account.

Paypal is not a bank and so has more limitations.

I can't do that as you are only allowed one business account and one personal account.

That does not count if you are moving countries, you can have another personal and business account in another country.

With an invalid postal address and an invalid phone number?

Sorry I am replying to TRY and help you, a lot of folks keep their other countries paypal account open as they may return home at some stage so I only stated that was an option.

There must be something in place to migrate accounts internationally

Nope.

 what happens with mergers and acquisitions - what if I sell my business to a company in the US - do they have to then keep up an Australian business address and phone number for the rest of time because they can't move the account without deleting 4000 active subscriptions

They would pay you for your list of subscriptions but you can't transfer a paypal account to another person or company so that would not apply.

 I guess we will have to bite the bullet and move everything over to bitcoin.

Well thats up to you, does not bother me at all as I don't work for paypal. I am just an ebay seller that helps out here. 

[seanpt]

OK thanks for your help.  If i'd had known there was no way of transferring out of the country i'd never have gone down this route. Now we're massively invested in Paypal and this has properly **bleep** up our plans. If someone from paypal would explain why they can't transfer accounts instead of saying that they just can't it'd help a lot. I can understand that it's a hassle but you'd think there would be some process for people who are putting millions of dollars through their systems.