If I were to set up an account to receive money for something that someone wants to purchase from me, does Paypal take a percentage and a fee from every dollar that comes in? It looks like a personal account won’t charge as long as it isn’t a credit card or debit card being used to pay but how else is there to pay? I’m new to this.
yes its a moving scale dependent on the amount of money, usually 3%
Free paypal account = no fees, but you cannot receive a payment if the sender uses their credit card. You can only receive a payment from another paypal user that has the $$$ in paypal already. Paypal is sorta like another bank accoun.
Business account = receive any money and all money received is charged 2.9% + .29 cents, even if they use their paypal balance.
You are allowed to have 2 accounts, one personal and one business so you can accept both.
You are not suppose to but if someone wants to send it to you via CC you can tell them send me X + 3% to cover the fees.
There are ways to get lower fee percentages, but basically you need to bring in like 10k/mo to get to like 2.2%, i forgot what the #s are exactly.
Cool, so if this person pays me through his paypal, and it goes into my Paypal account… does it just sit there or how do I receive that money?
paypal gives you choices on how to get your money. they can put it stright into a bank account that you give them. or send you a check or send you a credit card on which you can spend your paypal money.
on mine, the only time i get a fee taken out is with CC money, when someone pays me with CC. other than that no fees. and i can leave the money sitting in there so i dont spend it, but when i need it you can withdrawl to your bank account and it takes about 4 days to make it through
:word: And it sucks, I hate it, but you know you are getting the money that way.
Sweet thanks I just set one up!! 
Think of paypal as a online checking account. When people pay you it goes into that checking account. If you want that money you can withdraw it to your real checking account which if you do it on monday AM it’ll be available wed AM and post thursday.
Paypal doesn’t give you a credit card, its a debit card you have to sign up for, this is a good way to go since someone can pay your paypal at 12:01am, and you can goto a store and buy something with that debit card at 12:02am, its all instant and you also get 1.5% cash back for using it.
Paypal also has a high return, little less then 5% on the money you keep in their “account” this is automatic once your setup with the ATM card.
“on mine, the only time i get a fee taken out is with CC money, when someone pays me with CC. other than that no fees.”
Doesn’t sound right… Straight from paypal
PayPal charges Premier and Business accounts to receive payments. Personal accounts are free, but may not receive debit or credit card payments.
So if you have a free account you cannot accept a CC payment unless you upgrade, once you upgrade to a biz/premier account ALL payments are charged a fee. Unless its website payments pro or virtual terminal payments, which is a whole new post…
I’m not sure if I get what you mean here.
God I hate sounding like a newb…
Paypal is like a checking account that you earn interest off, its been around “Currently earning 4.82%*” for some time now. Thats what I meant by return.
Getting a return on your account is not automatic, when you create a paypal account there is an option on the left for setting up a “Money Market” account or something similiar. I’m not sure if you can do it right away or have to wait 60 days. They have changed alot since I signed up in '99 i think.
Basically if you don’t plan on keeping money in paypal, just ignore all of this 
Remember when people pay you, it goes to your paypal account and from their you’d have to manually click ‘withdraw’ to send it to your banks checking/saving account.
Hope that explains…
Hmm… I just got a paypal payment but there was fees of just over $8. I thought payments using paypal didn’t have fees?
Free personal accounts do not have fees but you cannot accept credit card payments. Only if a person has cash in paypal and sends it to your paypal account is the only way you can use a personal without upgrading to a premier where you get slapped with fees. You can only downgrade once from premier to free account.
Free personal account of course.
You may have a “free” account and paypal being free confused?
There are no monthly fees, either account is free to setup and keep, no monthly, no annual “fees”.
The only difference between the two is when you receive money, a free account will not take out any fees if its paypal cash balance to you.
If you have a business account, they take fees out.
However, again, both setups are free to have and only seperated when money is received…
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside
I figured it out. I was paid with paypal that was setup on a credit card. Hence the reason it wanted me to upgrade to a premeir account. Not a big deal… I just wanted to make sure I knew why it charged me. I was paid a little extra to make up for the difference so it’s all :tup:.