UK citizen, should my a/c be in USD and on PayPal US site?

[freedeanna]

I've been with PayPal for ages, but didn't use it that much. I'm now starting up some business where I'll be paid mostly through paypal. I just realised that my account is on the US site and in USD, but I often look at information on the UK site. Are all PayPal accounts held in USD? I feel I should be able to find this somewhere, but I can't. The help from the company itself is a maze and far too automated, so I've come here to see if there are some humans around.

Most of my business will be from UK citizens too, for now, so I'm guessing that this means I'm not charged the higher rate for a currency change (despite it being shown as USD in my account).

Cheers.

[bizclix]

Canadian business, My customer was charged in US dollars, which showed up on their credit card, so I was forced to reimburse them. Why can't the transactions be charged in funds of the country of business in which they are conducted? Shouldn't any differences be charged to the business, and not the client? This changes the way in which I was considering using Paypal no not using it at all.

If I have to reimburse every client then Paypal is not a convenience, but a liability. Also, I feel that if my site advertises Canadian funds, this is false advertising, and my client gets a nasty surprise everytime they pay.

I just tried to renew a membership on a site that also uses Paypal and now see that they are also charging me an addtional amount using US funds. This makes me very leery of using Paypal at all, on any site, and I am going to lodge a complaint to this site as well.

Why can't I find information about this on the Paypal site?

[sandypurins]

Your PayPal site registration is determined by your registration address... if you entered a USA street address, you will have a USA PayPal account.  If your street address is now a UK address, you should open a UK PayPal account.

You can maintain various currency balances in your PayPal account... check section "4.6 Receiving Money in Multiple Currencies" of PayPal's User Agreement for more information...

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/UserAgreement_full&...

Cross-border Purchase Payments will incur an additional 1% fee, ie. the standard fee will be 3.9% for cross-border Purchase Payments. The fees are explained in section "8. Fees" of PayPal's User Agreement...

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/UserAgreement_full&...

[Princes70]

I am from namibia, how can I change my currency to Namibian dollars?

[PayPal_Adrian]

Princes70 -

Welcome to the boards!

I'm sorry, but Namibian Dollars is not a supported currency that you can maintain in your balance.  You can see more information here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/mc/mc_intro-outside&bn_r=o

Hope this helps,

Adrian

[freedeanna]

Thank you sandypurins for that helpful reply. I haven't yet read the stuff at the links you posted, but something must have gone wrong. I was never resident anywhere else, and registered with a UK street address, but somehow I was given a US paypal account. I'll have to look into it more. There doesn't seem to be any way to actually talk to someone at Paypal, which makes it so much harder. It's why I had to come here to see if I could get some answers. I know it's probably all there in the user agreements and other documentation, but sometimes one is just too busy to plough through that mass of information. If you're right, I'm glad you told me. After I asked this question I've been thinking I was stupid and PayPal, being a US-based company, has all its users accounts in USD.  Maybe not.

Edited this to add - I see it says "Advisor" under your name. Do you work for paypal? If so, what should I do about this to change it? As I said, most of my business is going to be local, in GBP.

[freedeanna]

Please, please, please can anyone help me with this? I'm bumping it because I haven't found a solution. I have never had anything other than a UK street address, so why is my default currency in USD and my account on PayPal US? Is there ANY WAY I can contact somebody to deal with this? My business is about to start and I'm worried that people are going to be put off by finding they're asked to pay in the wrong currency, or in case some other glitch is caused by this. Besides, it seems like a pretty serious legal issue if I was supposed to be signed up in the UK with GBP. Please help!

[PayPal_Adrian]

freedeanna,

If you registered under a US account, and do not have a US residence, close the account in the Profile section.

You can then sign up again and select UK as your country of origin.  You'll even be able to use the same email address, though sometimes you have to give the system a few minutes or so for it to register the old account as closed.

If you're located in the UK, I would recommend going to www.paypal.co.uk to sign up.  After you click on the "Sign Up" link, on the first page, change the country/region drop down to the UK. 

Your default currency will be either GBP or EUR (though you can change this on any account in the same Profile area).

Hope this helps,

Adrian

[freedeanna]

Thank you very much for that, PayPal_Adrian. Now I'm wondering if I need to do that. I don't know how I missed it, but I just found the options for currency balances on the profile page, and there's an option to create different balances and select my default one. If you would be so kind, could you just confirm for me whether your advice above (to close my PayPal US a/c and open a .co.uk one) is required, or might be more convenient, or really is of no consequence, since I have verified my secure merchant account, would prefer not to start again if I don't have to, and apparently I can make GBP my default currency.Are there any potential problems if I just switch to GBP as my default and stay on paypal.com? Maybe I foresaw a problem where there isn't one. BTW, it takes me to paypal.com/uk/... when I log in, so maybe all is as it should be.

Sorry to keep on about it - I'm nearly there. I could probably find these details in the documentation, but it puts me to sleep by about page 4567, and the specific answer I'm after might not be there at all. I did try. 🙂 Can't believe I missed "Currency Balances" though! Oops.

[PayPal_Adrian]

That's why then, the information on currency balances was on page 4568   On a more serious note though, I wouldn't feel too bad about not locating the currency section.  Setting up a PayPal account is quick, but just as with any other tool, advanced business and international features take time to learn. 

Maintaining a US account when you do not have a US residence can lead to problems down the road.  Not only can it cause problems in registering your credit and debit cards, but should the account come under review, it will most likely be permanently limited due to an incorrect registration.  At that point, you would have to create a new UK account in any event to continue doing business.

Before you take any action, though, I would encourage you to double check to which country your account is registered.  The easiest way to do this is to go to your Profile section again (it really is the crossroads of any account, isn't it) and open up your Addresses section.  Your home address will have the country you're registered in the very bottom line.  If you have problems finding it, click on "Contact Us" and select to give us a ring.  An associate can quickly assess your account and locate any information you need.

Hope this helps,

Adrian