March 31, 2018 ruined my PayPal credit usage

[Gailly]

Now I can no longer use in-store purchases so buying gas and cigarettes is out of the question unless I plan for it and I have to plan long Enough head For those gift cards to come in the mail. Resolve this please

[microvb]

If you are talking about the PayPal Debit Mastercard which so few of us had in Canada since it was released during a period where PayPal was still a fairly young provider, then yes.  I share the pain, and it extends beyond just purchasing gas/cigarettes - into real business expense which you are now forced to either accomodate the client by taking on debt to provide their service while you transfer funds around, or make the client wait until after such a time that the funds have moved into a place where you have access (eg, transfer to your bank account).

What is worse about this, is the fact that the card was in USD, so it was perfect for online purchases in USD with no conversion.  Now, you will take a double-hit on the conversion. Lets look at the process now :

-  Convert in PayPal from USD to CAD ( current rate + 3% roughly )

-  Initiate transfer from PayPal to your bank account

-  Waiting period.  If lucky, I have seen this happen in as "little" as 36 working day hours (so transfer monday, ends up in bank wednesday), but more often, the transfer process is 3-14 days. (in spite of the 3-5 day notice).

-  From Canadian bank, use funds directly if provider supports the broken hybrid debit/credit system in Canada. If not, then transfer and wait whatever period it takes for those funds to move to the source you can use for your expenses.

-  Finally,  make the damn payment.  Now, since your supplier takes USD, your Canadian credit card will now incur a conversion fee ( exchange rate + 3-7% ) on the transaction -- which will clear at whatever the HIGHEST rate was during the "pending" and "posted" date of the transaction.

After discussing with PayPal, it seems that no one really knows why they have cancelled the cards for everyone in Canada.   Some claim it is legislative ( Canada and US legislation ), and other speculation is that the new issuing company they switched to "The Bancorp Bank" and "Total System Services, Inc." (TSYS / NetSpend) who are refusing to do business with Canada.

There are (and have been for a VERY long time) absolutely NO PLANS for any fix for us Canadians, ever.  At the moment, I feel the liklihood of Canadians seeing anything even remotely similar by PayPal - you have a better chance at seeing Dinosaurs ressurected.

If you need some confirmation on how ancient this request is, look no further than the forum Archives.  PayPal debit card has been on request by Canadians for almost as long as PayPal has existed, and instead of finally making the program available to everyone, they ( PayPal Inc ), cancel everyone who was lucky enough to have gotten on the program during it's VERY short lived "test" (which was abruptly pulled), have had their cards cancelled well before the expiration and with no notice ( they claim a notice on March 16 went out to "everyone" ).  Further, there is absolutely NO information about this action they took online, which the usual for any change PayPal does is to make some sort of post about it.

This whole experience feels rather fishy, and has left a very bitter taste after many years of loyalty - I (among others) get this type of behavior in return.

Some options :

https://www.stripe.com - accepts credit cards, apple pay, interac, and so on.  you can also have your site handle the processing and charge the cards when you want. (Something PayPal still doesn't offer Canadians also).

https://www.squareup.com - In addition to taking cards, they will send you a device (free) similar to yet another program that PayPal cancelled (PayPal Here), which allows you to accept customers credit cards. For about 50 bucks, you can also get a device which will also accept Interac Tap, and Chip based credit/debit cards. They also have a Virtual Terminal which you can enter credit cards and bill your client.

Aside from the above, there are really no viable alternatives in Canada for services that PayPal no longer and/or never offered.

For credit cards, if you need something for online purchases, there is also EntroPay (https://www.entropay.com) which pretty much allows you to generate credit cards you can use for purchases online or over the phone. This is great if you wish to restrict companies to only taking what you want them to take by giving each provider a different card and controlling the different balances and/or cancelling when you have a merchant thats gone crazy (or tries to).