Understanding Hidden Fees in Your PayPal Bill

Did you receive your monthly bill or statement from your PayPal account with hidden fees?

Maybe you get monthly statements and send them straight to spam without even looking at them. It is important that you review any banking statements even from a third-party electronic wallet service like PayPal.

Reviewing your statement or bill every month will help you find hidden fees in your PayPal bill before they get worse.

Hidden PayPal Fees

There are few hidden PayPal fees on a bill. But this depends entirely on the type of account you have.

Transaction fees

The main type of hidden fees in your PayPal bill might include transaction fees. If you sell something and you use PayPal to do so, then selling products or services in stores or online will come with a transaction fee. Sometimes this fee is called the payment processing fee and it differs in amount based on the type of transaction.

If you sell something in the United States online, this transaction fee is 2.9% of the total amount plus a fixed fee for the type of currency.
If you sell something outside of the United States online, the transaction fee is 4.4% plus a currency fee.
If you sell something in a store in the United States the transaction fee is 2.7%.
If you sell something in a store outside of the United States the transaction fee is 4.2%.

Balance transfers

Another hidden fee in your PayPal account might be the balance transfer fee. This applies to any type of account. Every account is linked to a bank account. So, if you decide to transfer from your personal or business PayPal account back to your bank, you have two options:

Instant: Instant, as the name suggests, gets the money back into your bank account instantly. But it charges 1% of the total amount you are transferring.
1-3 Business days: If you are willing to wait a few days there are no hidden fees or transfer fees of any kind.

PayPal Debit

If you have a PayPal debit card that is linked to your card, then there are a few hidden PayPal fees, much the same as you would have with any other debit card. For example, if you take cash out of an ATM, you get charged a small fee based on the currency conversion, but there is no fee for using an ATM, only for converting money from one country to another. So, if your account is based in the United States and you take out cash while on a European trip, you get charged a small transaction fee for converting the euros to dollars.

Sending money

If you want to send money to someone else, doing it directly with the bank account linked to your PayPal or with your PayPal balance comes with no hidden PayPal fees. However, if you do it with a debit card linked to your account then it is 2.9% of the amount you send to your friend or family.

Converting currencies

If you make a PayPal purchase in a currency other than the currency in which that online item is listed, you get charged 4% of the transaction to convert the currency. So, even if you are at home but you purchase something made in Japan which is listed in yen, you get charged 4% of your total transaction in order to convert that yen to dollars.

Donations

If you receive donations, something usually applicable to business accounts that have a donate button on their website or a PayPal checkout donate feature, there is a fee of 2.89% of the total amount donated and a fixed fee.

Crypto fees

PayPal allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies through their PayPal account. If you are doing so, PayPal charges a hidden fee for the transaction based on how much money you spend.

If you spend between 1 and $25, the fee is $0.50.
If you spend between $25 and $100 the fee is 2.3% of the transaction.
If you spend between $100 and $200 the fee is 2% of the transaction.
If you spend between $200 and $1,000 to 50 is 1.8% of the transaction.
If you spend more than $1,000 on cryptocurrency the fee is 1.5% of the transaction.

What other details do I need to consider when looking for hidden fees in my PayPal bill?

PayPal, like many financial companies, gives a statement every month. Your transactions are divided based on a billing cycle which lasts one month and as such, if a transaction like a crypto fee or a fee for sending money doesn’t land in your account until the next billing cycle simply because it took place at the very end of one month it could result in a statement that is higher than usual and looks like it has hidden fees which actually came from the month previous.

What can I do if I was incorrectly charged a fee?

If you were incorrectly charged the fee, start by reaching out to PayPal customer service to get the issue fixed. If customer service won’t help, there are still two legal options at your disposal:

You can try to sue PayPal in small claims court. Small claims court has restrictions on what cases qualify and how much compensation you can get.
You can also use a faster and easier option: consumer arbitration. With consumer arbitration you have more flexibility, can usually get a faster resolution, and what’s more, we can help.