Linking Paypal to spanish bank account - anyone done this?

Hi all, I have 2 different Paypal accounts, one personal and the other business, each linked to separate UK bank accounts.

We just done our first online holiday let (in spain) and a french renter chose to pay via PayPal in euros.

We can leave those euros sat in a UK Paypal account and spend them as euros, but if we want to "cash-in" (transfer from PayPal to our bank account) there will be a charge for sterling conversion (not expensive but nevertheless a charge) so I'm thinking why not open another Paypal account and leave it linked to our spanish bank account to collect/spend euros freely?

In summary, if a brit rents and pays in sterling, they use email address linked to UK PayPal, but if a european rents and pays in euros they use email address linked to Spain PayPal.

Read that back and it's clear as mud!!!.. anyone else out there already doing what I'm trying to do?

I have used paypal in spain but it

is only to buy goods online

i have had no problems with it

I had a refund once for an item I returned but

the credit stayed in my paypal account and was deducted

from the next item I bought.

From what I remember, you need to do this throughpaypal.es. The only problem I had, was that it used to be only available in Spanish but when registered you can select English as your language. I believe that the help system is not available in English though. This is all from memory, so please don't hold me to it.

Hi, I tried to link my old paypal account to my spanish bank, but was not able to change my billing address.

I opened a new paypal account on paypal.es (type paypal.com and it automatically takes you there anyway, unless you are on VPN) and then just choose English language from the top right of the page to get it all in English. I managed to get it linked to my Santander account no problem. They verify it by placing 2 small deposits of like 23 cents into your account  and you need to confirm the exact amounts to verify the account is yorus and link it.

I am not sure, because they seem to charge me for everything and I can never get a straight answer from the bank, but I think Santander charged me around  5 Euros for each of these 2 incoming payments despite them being tiny.

I have a paypal account linked to my Spanish account and it works fine.  My Spanish bank doesn't charge me for transferring funds to my bank account.

However, if you are trying to transfer funds to your Spanish credit card then I think that normally there is a charge for that.

I registered another address with Paypal for accepting payment in Euro, then added my Spanish bank account to it to withdraw funds into, exactly for this reason.

Mark

 PayPal does not have the facility to link to bank accounts in different currencies. so, you need to open a PayPal account with a different email address if you want to have one account linked to Pounds and another one to your account in Euros in Spain.

Withdrawals from PayPal to your nominated bank account are free since they are simply bank transfers.

The process is seamless and makes sending (and receiving money) extremely simple: no need to worry about BIC, IBAN etc.

Thanks to all for your responses. Have now done this and as has been suggested I simply created a new PayPal account on paypal.es using a new email address,  then chose option to link it to my spanish bank account. 

Only slight issue for a non-resident is the fill-out field for a contact telephone number only seems to accept 9 digit spanish number (i.e. it didn't like +44 etc).

One question though to kbr88. You said "The process is seamless and makes sending (and receiving money) extremely simple: no need to worry about BIC, IBAN etc"

I know it's free for anyone to pay euros into my account but as with all PayPal accounts I'll still have to pay charges to receive any payments. I've looked at the terms and conditions re fees and cross border transfers (e.g. a French or Irish person would pay in euro) but it's not easy to understand their scales of charges. So do you (or anyone) have any understanding or experience of how much of a cut paypal will take for say €300 ??? 

Thanks in anticipation.. Pat

 Pat, if you send money from a bank account that is linked to paypal, the transaction is free. so, if you send 300€ from your spanish account to another euro account in france, there is no fee. the same works in reverse. if someone in france sends you euros from their linked bank account to your linked account there will be no transaction fees. This is due to european banking regulations (SEPA) that do not allow banks to charge any more for a cross-border transaction than they charge domestically.

This changes if you are sending or receiving foreign currency or if you link to a credit card. If you link to a credit card, then the transaction costs are 3.4% plus fee of €0.35 per transaction.

By way of an example, I recently transfered about 350€ to someone in the United States and I paid €3.50. Remember, paypal also makes money via the exchange rate.

If you are transferring money within SEPA but non-EURO: eg. from euros in spain to GBP in the UK, the best service to use is Transferwise. YOu will save more money than with any other form of transfer, but of course you do need to use IBAN, BIC etc, so not as simple.

Hope that's helpful

regards

A warning. Paypal does not always complete a transaction immediately  and you may be misled by the completed status in your account. That just means the seller has been paid. Sometimes it takes upto 2 weeks for transactions to be truly completed. If Paypal has your bank and credit and debit cards, it will endlessly try and debit these in rotation. They once delayed billing my bank account for an air fare with Monarch, and then kept pushing me into overdraft  and return fees amounting to £200 ! Be prepared that they may ask you to verify your identity by faxing in copies of utility bills and passport. How this proves anything is beyond me. They also withold your money with no warning. See paypalsucks for more horror stories. My advice is to not give them any credit or debit card details. You can make one off payments without registering fully as needed.

 I use Paypal when I buy in Internet.

It is safe

Hi Pat. I’m trying to set up spanish PayPal. How did you get round spanish mobile number? I used to have a pay as you go one but as I live mostly in uk the number was eventually given to someone else due to inactivity! Thanks Martin

I have a Spanish PayPal account linked to my Spanish PAYG (Eroski - Vodafone) mobile, no problem.

Martypeeps, sorry for delayed response don't come on here so much lately...

I just put a made up 9 digit spanish number in there (doesn't matter as phone numbers not needed for anything).

The only bank account that I have is a Spanish bank account. I've been using PayPal to make online purchases for about 10 years without any problem. The PayPal account is linked to my bank account and to 2 credit cards both of which were issued by my bank. On the single occasion that I've had a problem the partial refund that I got was credited to my bank account as that is where the money was extracted from initially. I had cause to telephone PayPal over the issue and they were very helpful. My bank has never made any charges related to payments I make through PayPal whether I use the bank account or one of the credit cards. This may, of course, be because of the type of account I have which generates very few bank charges.

Please can someone twll me the name of the Bank in Spain who excepts Paypal ? 

Thanks 

Adele 

My PayPal account is linked to my spanish Santander account No problems 

adeltino

I have had my bank account at La Caixa linked to my PayPal account for 11 years. I've never had a problem and I've never been charged bank charges irrespective of whether the money has gone out of the bank account or out of one of the credit cards.

While I'm here I'll mention something else. I had to change my credit card 4 times in 3months because fraudulent charges were being applied to it. It turned out that my email account had been hacked. The Guardia Civil recommended that I get a "Caixa Wallet" I'd never heard of it. It's a cardboard Visa card only for use online and you can keep it empty. If you've got to pay €20 you transfer €20 to it at no cost. It's brilliant. Every time something was fraudulently charged to my ordinary credit card I used to have to spend half a day making a denuncia at the GC, but once I'd done that I always got the money back. But that's all in the past with the Caixa Wallet.

This message was last edited by ehw on 27/03/2018.