I first became a PayPal member on October 15, 2006.  At first I just used PayPal to pay for a few items online.  But I always wished that they would soon allow payments to be received.  That wish came true some time November 2007 when PayPal finally allowed Philippine users to withdraw to their credit or debit cards.  That was great news for me.  Then recently I started accepting some offshore writing projects and for the first time I was accepting payments to my PayPal account.  I had started thinking how I'm supposed to withdraw the money now.  I didn't want it going to my credit card.  So I decided to get a UnionBank EON account to avail of their VISA debit facility.  This was ten days ago.  I still haven't picked up my ATM card and I don't think I would want to anymore.  You see, last January 26 I found out that I could now transfer my PayPal balance to my local bank account.  What followed next was a mixture of joy and DOH!-ness.

First the joy.  The probem with transferring money to a credit card or debit card was the $5.00 processing fee.  While it is a flat rate, $5.00 is quite a lot for me.  But transferring to my bank account will just cause me 50 pesos (approximatey $1.25) if I withdraw anything less than 7,000 pesos (approximately $170). After that, I pay no transfer fees at all.  That sounded good to me.  So, I logged into PayPal to transfer a small test amount.  And this is where the DOH!-ness started.

When I was enrolling my bank account, PayPal asked for the bank code.  Having no clue as to what it is, I called up my bank.  They didn't know what it was either.  They never had one.  But they do have a SWIFT code and a routing code.  The SWIFT code was in letters.  But PayPal was looking for a 9-digit bank code.  So the SWIFT code was no good.  They also gave me a routing code though.  Hmm. Nine digits.  I figured this might be the bank code.  So I entered that, withdrew $10, and waited.  A couple of days later PayPal says they have finally completed the transaction.  But my bank account hasn't reflected the amount yet.  I thought that perhaps it would take a while for it to clear.  Today I received the official email from PayPal about withdrawals to Philippine banks.  I also read dennison's post about it.  That's when I found out that I had entered the wrong value for the bank code.  DOH!

I've corrected the value now and tried to withdraw another $10 test withdrawal.  I shall find out in a few days if this one finally works.  SIGH!  Might have to accept that I just lost 400 pesos.