Visa Debit Card, Receiving funds via PayPal in Trinidad

Postby **Team Loco** » April 13th, 2011, 10:40 pm

man this is wonderful news!! opens up a whole worldwide opportunity. finally, i can sell on ebay

Chimera · Postby **Chimera** » April 13th, 2011, 10:47 pm

the only issue with selling on ebay is shipping prices from Trinidad to the US

to send a simple document via fedex from Trinidad to new york/florida is $250-$300TT which is 35/45 USD

to ship a parcel within the US via USPS is $5 flat rate box or $1 US per pound using UPS 2 day service

Many sellers on ebay provide free shipping , hadda factor in that extra 35/45 US when offering to sell to the US unless you dealing in services.

zitanos · Postby **zitanos** » April 13th, 2011, 10:49 pm

Out of curiosity thou...

Since PayPal allows us to withdraw to our CC, how do you get the money off the credit/debit card after they have deposited it?

Do the banks here allow us to transfer the money from a CC account to a normal savings/checking account?

Or do you have to withdraw it all via an ATM.

I'm hoping they allow the transfer from CC to account as an option....

Chimera · Postby **Chimera** » April 13th, 2011, 10:54 pm

i don't exactly know how it's gonna work, the way i assume it's going to be, you will have a paypal balance on your account that you can spend or transfer to the US side of your credit card..which will pay off whatever balance you have on the card or just be a credit on the card.

again i have no idea exactly how it's going to work as they specified you can withdraw to a US bank account..not a trinidad bank account

you can withdraw funds from a credit card but....that counts as a advance withdrawal at around $17% interest.

pugboy · Postby **pugboy** » April 14th, 2011, 4:41 am

paypal makes a killing with them fees, ebay takes similar % too

TriniGT · Postby **TriniGT** » April 14th, 2011, 6:51 am

Bezman wrote:
TriniGT wrote:Yep saw it when I went to make payment last week, good stuff now someone buy my parts via Paypal please .................. seriously now .

Jason, seriously, put them on Ebay and sell them for US market value, receive the money via paypal and ship via fed ex, you go make a killing!!

Really thinking about selling my stuff via Ebay but I am studying the shipping cost. I know people will spend much on one off JDM stuff but stuff like CP pistons and whatnot may not sell as the shipping cost when they can get it locally cheaper unless I drop my price even more. Will try for some of the smaller items and see how it goes afterall people buy stuff from Japan and HongKong.

redmanjp · Postby **redmanjp** » January 29th, 2012, 5:40 pm

yeah so any updates on this? just got a visatravelmoney from RBL- it's a Visa Electron

anyone have this card & used it successfully with Paypal? I think paypal recently added a T&T page to their website which would indicate they should recognise cards issued here right?

Postby **Duane 3NE 2NR** » January 30th, 2012, 12:52 pm

^ try it and see please

shameer · Postby **shameer** » January 30th, 2012, 1:12 pm

i have neen using paypal on all my ebay purchases for a couple of years now but just recently paypal is not recognizing any of my payments or is saying the seller does not accept payment from international customers.......

i use my us address and zip code for the shipping and my us contact phone # and that made it easy to purchase items using paypal....

but what all the overseas companies are doing now is recognizing your card from trinidad and charging a higher exchange rate than the norm in order to reduce their processing fees.....

like brandsmart uses a 6.73 to 1 ......it cost me cheaper to purchase a ticket and make my purchases in cash......

because of this i dont use paypal any more....

copper_shot · Postby **copper_shot** » January 30th, 2012, 2:25 pm

i'm with first citizens

both visa and mastercard

paypal works fine for me, made purchases over 1000us in a day too

sometimes there are merchants that have their ebay accounts set to not receive funds from trinidad. you can contact them and let them know and they can add trinidad to their list.
well thats what i did before and payments went through after

Postby **Duane 3NE 2NR** » January 30th, 2012, 2:44 pm

Paypal has been working fine to purchase stuff online long time now.

I think what the other users want to know is if they can recieve money via PayPal to their visa debit card

pugboy · Postby **pugboy** » January 30th, 2012, 4:00 pm

there is a conversion option in paypal to let your bank handle the fx rate instead which will be more inline with normal rates
If you let paypal handle the conversion they use a much higher rate as you experienced.

shameer wrote:i have neen using paypal on all my ebay purchases for a couple of years now but just recently paypal is not recognizing any of my payments or is saying the seller does not accept payment from international customers.......

i use my us address and zip code for the shipping and my us contact phone # and that made it easy to purchase items using paypal....

but what all the overseas companies are doing now is recognizing your card from trinidad and charging a higher exchange rate than the norm in order to reduce their processing fees.....

like brandsmart uses a 6.73 to 1 ......it cost me cheaper to purchase a ticket and make my purchases in cash......

because of this i dont use paypal any more....

Postby **Duane 3NE 2NR** » February 7th, 2012, 1:52 pm

Ok I did some testing and here's what I found

In Trinidad & Tobago you CAN use a Republic Bank Visa Debit Card (Visa Travel Money / VTM) card with PayPal for BOTH payments and withdrawals. You CAN setup your PayPal account as a T&T resident using your T&T address without needing a US address or bank account.

The VTM card is a US$ card. Even if you put TT$ on the card it will be converted to US$. You can withdraw money from the card in any currency, it will be taken out as US$ and converted using the current exchange rate.

Republic Bank offers the VTM cards to anyone, you don't need to have an account with them. All you need is 2 forms of ID (a utility bill may be needed). They charge US$10 for the card which you can pay with in TT$. It takes 2 days for the VISA debit card to activate but you can load it up with money immediately when applying for the card. The VTM card has a PIN number that you can use at ATMs anywhere. You can use the VTM card without PayPal to buy stuff on websites that accept VISA credit cards. There is no fees to use the VTM card, however there is a fee to withdraw cash from the card (TT$20 per withdrawal I think).

If you do have a Republic bank account you can sign up for online banking and be able to check your VTM card balance online. you can also use Republic online banking to transfer funds to load your VTM card with more money.

You can sell items on ebay or anywhere and people can pay you via PayPal. The funds go into your PayPal account immediately and at the end of the month PayPal will automatically withdraw all your PayPal funds to your Visa debit VTM card. You can technically even use it instead of Western Union / MoneyGram to send and receive money from foreign. Keep in mind when you receive a payment via PayPal the funds belong to you but you can't withdraw it or use it for 30 days (paypal does this incase you need to refund the buyer, so it is security for them)

When selling items online, when you receive a payment PayPal charges you a fee of 4.9% + US$0.30 per transaction. So if you receive US$100, PayPal will keep US$5.20. There is additional 3.5% fee if they person pays you in a foreign currency like TT$ from their TT$ credit card - so cater for that when setting your online prices.

If you want to withdraw your PayPal funds to your VTM card you can. However there is a daily withdrawal limit of US$500 per day and there is a fee of US$5.00 per withdrawal. There is however no fee if you wait till the end of the month and PayPal automatically withdraws your entire balance to your VTM card (no limit).

[X]~Outlaw · Postby **[X]~Outlaw** » February 7th, 2012, 2:04 pm

SWEET!!! this is very good to know

megadoc1 · Postby **megadoc1** » February 7th, 2012, 2:08 pm

thanks for the update Duane !

prakash · Postby **prakash** » February 7th, 2012, 7:14 pm

finally .

fozzy2010 · Postby **fozzy2010** » February 8th, 2012, 7:37 am

Been using Paypal as a payment gateway on our site since August last year with no problems, even received an order from Belgium last month. We used a regular Republic Bank Visa card though.

Bizzare · Postby **Bizzare** » February 8th, 2012, 7:45 am

Visa debit card is limited when doing business online though, as you can only load $5000 USD or less onto it.

redmanjp · Postby **redmanjp** » February 8th, 2012, 2:43 pm

i believe there is a fee to load money unto the card

http://www.republictt.com/1asp/personal.asp?f=ebs_tmoney

Visa TravelMoney Service Charges

New / Replacement Card Fee- US$10.00

Commission on the TT equivalent of the amount loaded / reloaded- 1.15%

Currency Conversion Fee- 1.5% of the amount requested for transactions in foreign countries where US Dollars is not the currency

Cash-Out Fee- TT$20.00

Immediate Activation Request Fee- TT$46.00

zahc · Postby **zahc** » February 8th, 2012, 7:32 pm

Thanks for that info Duane.

Btw Shameer and everyone else, Paypal doesn't exactly use a higher exchange rate when you make purchases. They use the going rate at the time of transaction but they take a 2.5% commission on any transaction in which you have to convert currencies.

Pablo660 · Postby **Pablo660** » February 8th, 2012, 10:09 pm

I have been using PayPal over 3_5 years with rbl fcb and recently IBL gold
Send payments and receive money easy
Never had problems but recently I noticed my galaxy tab ebay app using my current location and saying unable to ship or international shipping only and when I move over to my iPhone or laptop for same item at same time it uses skyox address allows the sale
Anyone notice that also

Pablo660 · Postby **Pablo660** » February 8th, 2012, 10:12 pm

I have been using PayPal over 3_5 years with rbl fcb and recently IBL gold
Send payments and receive money easy
Never had problems but recently I noticed my galaxy tab ebay app using my current location and saying unable to ship or international shipping only and when I move over to my iPhone or laptop for same item at same time it uses skyox address allows the sale
Anyone notice that also

Postby **Duane 3NE 2NR** » February 8th, 2012, 11:00 pm

zahc wrote:Thanks for that info Duane.

Btw Shameer and everyone else, Paypal doesn't exactly use a higher exchange rate when you make purchases. They use the going rate at the time of transaction but they take a 2.5% commission on any transaction in which you have to convert currencies.

actually it's 3.5%

https://www.paypal.com/tt/cgi-bin/websc ... es-outside
Commercial payment fees for Trinidad and Tobago
Foreign currency fee
Each transaction that requires a currency conversion includes a currency processing fee of 3.5%, which is included in the conversion rate.

ironman2012 · Postby **ironman2012** » February 8th, 2012, 11:26 pm

Here's what!Paypal charges $6.60TT to every $1 US as some kinda conversion rate,with the real US conversion rate at present is around $6.40.To get away from that little extra charge your VTM card is already in US.What to do is at the start to the paypal checkout page you will see a option whether you should pay in your currency or the currency of the seller,choose the option "pay in seller's currency" and you will be only charged the $6.40tt-$1US instead of the $6.60TT-$1US.However you dont have to do it again because it is automatically defaulted to that option,well at least on ebay.

Saved alot of money due to this.

Freakaz0id · Postby **Freakaz0id** » February 9th, 2012, 11:56 am

good info here!

redmanjp · Postby **redmanjp** » February 9th, 2012, 3:07 pm

ironman2012 wrote:Here's what!Paypal charges $6.60TT to every $1 US as some kinda conversion rate,with the real US conversion rate at present is around $6.40.To get away from that little extra charge your VTM card is already in US.What to do is at the start to the paypal checkout page you will see a option whether you should pay in your currency or the currency of the seller,choose the option "pay in seller's currency" and you will be only charged the $6.40tt-$1US instead of the $6.60TT-$1US.However you dont have to do it again because it is automatically defaulted to that option,well at least on ebay.

Saved alot of money due to this.

making sense- with RBL dey done already charging you to load money on d card

pugboy · Postby **pugboy** » February 15th, 2012, 6:50 am

Who has tried receiving money with a TT paypal acct via paypal sent from a US paypal account ?

Is it converted to TT at the lower bankrate ?

JStaples · Postby **JStaples** » February 27th, 2012, 8:25 pm

Yeah, That is good info but some questions though. How can you withdraw large amount of funds from the VTM card? I went to the bank and they told me they cannot withdraw any funds from the VTM due to some kind of security issue. They said I can only withdraw the funds from it using an ATM. But the problem here is...If I happened to receive about 4000USD on my card via Paypal, there is no way to withdraw all of this at once..Due to Republic Bank limits which is about 3000TT per day at the ATM (unless I decide to withdraw some money everyday). How could you withdraw large amounts in one transaction?? I even tried sending money from my VTM to my republic bank account online and apparently this cannot be done there either. Anyone else ever experienced this problem? If I had a RBL VTM cards, could I go to their bank and withdraw the funds?

mimi007 · Postby **mimi007** » February 27th, 2012, 8:38 pm

pugboy wrote:Who has tried receiving money with a TT paypal acct via paypal sent from a US paypal account ?

Is it converted to TT at the lower bankrate ?

I have received US from my customers, I can't remember the rate, but I believe they show you the TT equivalent or ask if you want it to be converted or something like that. I opt for mine to stay in US n they deduct their little fee.

Postby **Duane 3NE 2NR** » February 27th, 2012, 10:49 pm

the foreign currency conversion rate is 3.5% for PayPal

JStaples wrote:Yeah, That is good info but some questions though. How can you withdraw large amount of funds from the VTM card? I went to the bank and they told me they cannot withdraw any funds from the VTM due to some kind of security issue. They said I can only withdraw the funds from it using an ATM. But the problem here is...If I happened to receive about 4000USD on my card via Paypal, there is no way to withdraw all of this at once..Due to Republic Bank limits which is about 3000TT per day at the ATM (unless I decide to withdraw some money everyday). How could you withdraw large amounts in one transaction?? I even tried sending money from my VTM to my republic bank account online and apparently this cannot be done there either. Anyone else ever experienced this problem? If I had a RBL VTM cards, could I go to their bank and withdraw the funds?

as far as I know you can withdraw at the teller any amount from the card once it's not ALL, the fee is 20TT per withdrawal - if you have ID I can't see how it is a security risk - ask them what risk is there? It's a debit card, it's YOUR money!

withdrawing all your funds from the card cancels the card, i think