What do you (freelancers) use for payment?

I've been using PayPal for half a year or longer and it's worked out great!
But today when I wanted to withdraw founds it didn't let me and insisted that I add a US bank account, which sicks since I'm not from US and getting an account there wouldn't be so simple. Plus I like my visa

So I was wondering what online payment services others here use and what are their fees?
Just so I would know if I have some more convenient options.

Thanks for sharing

 

I use a local paypal for small jobs. For big jobs I use direct bank transfer.

Paypal should be set up to let you withdraw funds into a local bank account. Is it possible your country setting is wrong? If so you can't change it, you have to open a new account with the correct country setting.

 

One of the contractors doing art for us is from Ukraine and for some reason, PayPal will not allow payments to that country. So instead we had to use Western Union, which allows for quick international money transfer.

Apparently, they have a pretty bad rep when it comes to reliability, but thankfully I haven't run into any issues with that. Of course it probably helps that the guy we're working with isn't a scam artist. Anyway, that's what I use when I cant use PayPal.

 

How do you do direct bank transfers? I'd rather use that.

The country setting should be correct. And I suppose it will not accept the bank account that I do have.

 

You'll need to get the swift code and bank address and a bunch of other details. But once you have that it's just a standard transfer.

Most banks charge pretty high fees for international transfers, so it doesn't make sense for little projects. Services like PayPal and Western Union bypass this by using hedge funding.

 

The "best" way if you are dealing with US-US is an ACH transfer. Basically no fees for that! Paypal is certainly best for smaller payments, then wire transfer for larger ones.

Or you could have them drop a bag of cash off in a railroad terminal lock box... Make sure to wear sunglasses, a hat, trench coat, and a fake mustache (especially if you're a woman) when you go to pick it up for the full effect!

 

Paypal is the best when they allow you to withdraw funds into bank account, although there's a chance that paypal is ripping you off on currency conversion fees. You need saving account for withdrawal and your country must be supported. If you specified your country as "USA", then, of course, you'll need USA bank account.

Alternative options are wire transfer (never used that, can have $15..$20 fees per transactioN), cheque (never used that, can take up to 3 weeks to turn that into cash), payoneer (will rip you off on card maintenance fees), western union.

Have you considered contacting paypal support?

In some regions/countries paypal forbids withdrawal of money, so you can pay for stuff with paypal, but can't receive money from paypal. Unfortunately, I don't know where one could find a list of those regions.

 

My local pizza shop is now accepting paypal. So in theory I could survive without needing to withdraw the cash.

Its actually surprising how many local vendors are starting to accept paypal.

 

I once started a thread about this myself, but would payoneer be a viable alternative???

 

Used PayPal for a few years, but PayPal have done some changes now, can't withdraw money anymore.

 

Transferwise, nothing beats it.

 

I'm planning to start using direct wire transfers when I'm getting $300-400 from a single client (might need to combine 2 payments for this).

As for paypal I might have reached some monthly withdrawal limit or something. I withdraw $650 since the start of this year. I'll wait a while to see if something changes.
I contacted them about using my existing bank accounts, but they seem slow to reply.

 

Suppose you make an excess of over 20k. Whats the best method of recieving such a huge sum????

 

Well if you're going to use paypal you should know that they take a considerable % of the transfer.

On the other side I think banks take a fixed fee, which would be a much better deal for you. Although I should say I don't have any experience with this personally.

 

hmmm...might use a relative of mine for something like that.

 

A shotgun and paypal,.

 

I use Gumroad, Paypal; and Alipay for my friends in Asia.

 

So I got a reply from PayPal,
It seems like they had a bug.
So I'm able to withdraw money again