Problems for expats

[wilkpat]

Paypal no longer accommodates people who live abroad and wish to pay in their home currency!?

If you have a credit card for an account in one currency but live in a country with a different currency then you cannot use that credit card.

This has happened since Paypal got bought by Ebay, who have been notorious in being unable to accommodate expats.

[kernowlass]

If you move abroad you need to open another account in that country and attach that countries financial info eg bank accounts or cards to that paypal account.

This is because due to the differing laws and banking regs that differ from country to country paypal has to be country specific.

Always been that way, nothing to do with ebay.

[stephennclark]

Hi.  Unfortunately this isn't much help.  I have one email address, a global web mail (.com) that is not tied to any ISP or country.  I've been using it for years and don't want to change it.  When I try to create a new account in my new country, Paypal says that I have already used that email address on an existing account, asks me to log in and just takes me to my account summary for the UK.  There doesn't seem to be a way to link different country accounts to the same email address which is a flaw in my opinion.  I can understand the need for different accounts in different countries but you should be able to link them to the same email and then be able to choose which one to pay from, for example, use my new account for personal stuff in my new country and use my old UK account for presents for family back in the UK.

Can any advisors please respond to this and let me know how to work around this issue (without having to create a new email solely for a new paypal account).

[kernowlass]

why can't you just open another email addy?

your email addy IDENTIFIES your paypal account so of course you can't use it on another paypal account.

[stephennclark]

I can, and if that's the only way to do it then I'll have to. But I'll never use the other email for anything but paypal and will have to set it up in gmail as a linked account so that I can monitor any activity on it. It would have just been nice to be able to have multiple currency accounts linked to the same email address for people who emigrate as it's quite common.

[kernowlass]

but how can they do that??

if you have accounts in say germany, france and the uk and a buyer pays you to an email address how will paypal know which account to send the payment to if they ALL HAVE THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS?? 

[stephennclark]

Anything is possible. It could go to a holing account and be transferred to the account of the paypal account holders choice or could default to the same currency or could be user configurable to always pay into a set account at the current exchange rate. All it takes is requirements, code and testing.

[kernowlass]

thats like having 3 barclays bank accounts with the same sort code and account number for all 3 of them !!!

[PayPal_Dian]

Hi Stephenclark,

Thank you for posting in our community.

I understand that you would like different accounts linked to one main PayPal account. I am afraid that at the moment this is not possible due to the fact that every country has different banking regulations. So we cannot add a PayPal account that is set up in another country to your UK account. I am afraid that you would need to open a new email address in order to open a new PayPal account.

As you can only have an account in the country of Residence we would advise to close any second account that you may have if you have moved to another country. If you live in both countries partially you can have two accounts :).

For security purposes an email address can only be used on one PayPal account. If we would change that we could not guarantee the safety. 

I hope this information helps.

Dian

[Whitehorn799]

The problem I encountered is centered on where you are from versus where you live. When you create a new account, once you tell PayPal your nationality, it seems to automatically assume that the following bank account you enter will be of the same nationality as your home country. Of course, that's not true for expats. Once the account has been created, you cannot change your nationality. To get around this, I just claimed that I was a national of the country in which I now live and work. I didn't find an easier way to do this. Luckily, I will truly become a coriander of my working country within the next year. I hope this helps PayPal become a bit more friendly to expats.