Save on PayPal Fees

[Zino]

I stumble upon a lot of people all the time who does not know how to pay with PayPal's "mass pay" feature, which only costs $1 in fees, instead of the usual 4%. I will therefore try to write a quick guide on how to do this. It is quick, easy and as long as you're paying with PayPal balance, anyone can do it.

Some people believe that PayPal is only charging fees if the buyer is paying from credit card, but this is not right. PayPal charges roughly 4% of the amount from the payee, even though it is a PayPal balance payment.

Mass pay can be made only from a Premier/Business account, not from Personal accounts. Paypal does not charge incoming payments from balance to private accounts, so if you pay someone with a private account, just send normal payment, its free.


Mass Payment

According to PayPal's mass pay instructions, you are supposed to create an Excel file with the payment information and save the file as a text file with tab separated values. I believe there is a much easier way to do it:

I. Open up notepad (or any text/ascii editor)

II. Type the following information, separated by tabs (use tab key, not spaces).


An example of a payment text file:

payment@email.com 999 USD

This textfile will, when uploaded to PayPal, process a payment of $999 US Dollars to the PayPal address payment@email.com

Save the text file as anything you'd like, just try to remember where you saved it for later.

III. Log in to your PayPal account the usual way, but instead of sending a payment the regular way, look for the small link on the bottom of your screen that says "Mass Pay". Found it? Good, now click it.

Mass Pay Screenshot

IV. You are now one step away from doing a mass payment. Browse to find the text file you just created in notepad and upload it to PayPal as directed. Type in the e-mail address you want the receipt to be sent to and perform the payment by clicking the button.

The PayPal recipient has now received his/hers payment and it only cost you $1 in fees, instead of 4% !

Good luck with mass pay payments, it has saved me a couple of bucks as some deals involve adding the 4% fee to the final sales price.

[Glenn Dorsey]

I never head of using mass payments with PayPal. that's a pretty cool trick. It ticks me off every time Paypal charges 4% on a transaction, even though I am paying from my balance. Doesn't that just seem a little dirty to you?

This is really cool, but it looks kind of complicated. I'm not that good at computers, and I know NOTHING about EXCEL. See how PayPal is making this so hard to do that the average consumer like me could never figure it out? Well, I am going to try anyways.

I use PayPal a lot with eBay. I have been an eBay merchant for about 6 years now I think. I got into eBay to sell my used junk around the house. After about a year, I figured out how to make money with eBay because I got hooked up with a Chinese importer out of Dallas, Texas. I have been doing it every since. I also use eBay, and PayPal, as a buyer of goods. We buy everything that we don't need in a hurry from eBay. 9 times out of 10, it's cheaper on eBay.

I still hate eBay and PayPal though! lol

Glenn

[rachael24]

Why do you hate Ebay and Paypal Glenn?

[Zino]

Originally Posted by Glenn Dorsey

I never head of using mass payments with PayPal. that's a pretty cool trick.

This is really cool, but it looks kind of complicated. I'm not that good at computers, and I know NOTHING about EXCEL.

It's really easy, you can do it in Notepad. Just copy the format i posted such as:

payment@email.com 999 USD

Obviously replace the payment amount and Email address, and you use the "Tab" key to insert the spaces rather then the actual space key.

Then log in and down the bottom there's a "Mass Pay" link, click that. All you have to do then is browse to your text file and submit that, and enter an email addy for the receipt address.

It's very similar to uploading a photo at a site like PhotoBucket.

Done, it cost $1 instead of 4% of the sending amount. You can save a few hundred dollars per transfer if your sending large sums of money.

Originally Posted by rachael24

Why do you hate Ebay and Paypal Glenn?

I had an incident with PayPal which caused quite a bit of damage, so the trick above is the least they can do to repay me.

I was sent $x,xxx and the payment was flagged as suspicious, and PayPal limited my account and the senders. After a lengthy process of faxing documents and several phone calls, the limitation was lifted on both the senders and my account.

We both verified by phone with PayPal that everything was ok to re-send the original payment, we were both given the ok that it will be fine now. The payment was resent no problems.

For security i only like to keep $1,000 or under in the account, so i transfered the excess to my bank. Still ok, 45 transactions and 2 weeks later the original transaction was flagged suspicious and both the sender and my account were limited again for this same payment.

This is where it gets interesting.

Because i didn't have the original amount still in the PayPal account, it went in to a negative balance... Then the 45 transactions were reversed by PayPal, all marked as suspicious in what was an obvious attempt to recover the original payment amount.

These 45 reversed transactions included monthly subscriptions to multi-million dollar companies that had been in place for years, yet they were deemed suspicious.

The 45 people i had paid received notification "I" had reversed the transactions and they were open disputes making everyone believe i filed chargebacks against them.

One of the payments was for one of my web servers, because it was reversed my hosting account went in to negative balance and the server was taken offline resulting in thousands of dollars in lost revenue due to business sites being offline.

There was hosting account for 80 people on the server, so i was swamped by angry emails from 125 people.. The 80 with no websites or businesses and the original 45 reversed transactions.

It took me weeks of 12 hours a day doing nothing but sort out PayPal's mess, the PayPal manager even said quote "I can't see any possible explanation why the 45 transactions were reversed going by your lengthy immaculate account history".

Trust me, i could type until my fingers bleed on how much money and stress PayPal caused me.

[Glenn Dorsey]

@ Rachael-- eBay has just started charging so much more in fees recently. It's getting very hard for a little guy like me to make anything on eBay now. Seriously, it's out of control. Now it seems like most of the pennies I make selling stuff on eBay gets gobbled up in PayPal fees. It's a nasty little cycle, and eBay ends up winning on all three fronts.

@ Zino-- Thanks for the tips. I actually tried it yesterday and I got it to work. I am such a computer idiot that using EXCEL just scares me a bit. It's not as bad as I thought it would be.

About your situation with PayPal, you're not alone. I had a similar situation, with a lesser dollar amount, that I will have to share here when I have the time. Long story short, the jerks tried to screw up my credit rating. I'll feel ya in later. Grrrr..... PayPal!!!