Updates: You can now have a Paypal Philippines account. Just sign up here. You can withdraw an amount not exceeding $500 per month to any debit, credit card or directly into your Philippine bank accounts. You will just need the bank codes and savings account number.
Maybe you’ve already heard of the plan and the efforts to make Paypal available in the Philippines.
Though I think we’re still far from getting that much coveted nod from eBay (owner of Paypal), I think it’s good to know that there IS a way to get paid by people who has Paypal. If you haven’t heard of it yet, spell X-o-o-m.
I know, it’s not the real deal, but it’s close enough. So how do you receive payments from Paypal users?
- Sign up for a Xoom account.
- Enter your personal bank account. See complete list of supported banks here.
- Create a Payment Button by indicating an item name/number along with the list price and the shipping fee.
- Paste the button on your website or a send the link to your client via email.
- Client receives the “request for payment”, creates a Xoom account or logs in and processes the payment using his Paypal account, credit card or eCheck.
- You get a confirmation email with the tracking number and receive the payment directly into your bank account in a matter of hours.
That’s it! Xoom payment limitation is from $25 to $2,500 per transaction. If you don’t have a bank account, you can opt to pick up the cash in the bank within minutes (list includes Equitable PCI Banks and Cebuana Lhuillier) or have it delivered into your doorstep. I was even able to get my remittance delivered at 9:00 in the evening before — good for people who are away during the day or at their offices working.
You can choose to receive the money in peso or dollar denominations. Is it expensive? Depends on what you’re comparing it to. If you send $50, there’s the $3.50 fee (7% transaction fee). If you send $1,000, the fee is just $8 (or 0.8% transaction fee). These fees apply if you want to receive in Philippine peso but it’s a little more if you opted for US dollars.
The catch? Their peso-dollar exchange rate ain’t that good. Today, it’s just US$ 1.00 = PHP 50.8687. Still if you factor that in, it’s still cheap.
Some guy contacted me the other day wanted to advertise on my site so I asked him for $45 for 3 month’s for a single link to his website. I sent him a payment request via Xoom and I had the money in just over 3 hours. See the tracking code for preview.
I know it’s not the real deal. We still ought to have our very own legit Paypal account somehow. But I’ve been using Xoom for 3 years and it works.
I think one way of convincing eBay to add the Philippines in it’s list of supported countries is by using 3rd-party services like Xoom. If eBay notices that there are tons of transactions going into the Philippines from people currently using Paypal, they may think that we’re not a high-risk country anymore.
[tags]paypal philippines, xoom[/tags]
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i used xoom to send money to someone in the philippines and it sucked. i tried all options (deposit, delivery and pick-up) but they would always cancel the transaction, “due to violation of TOS” daw. i tried contacting the customer service, but i just got a very vague reply.
I’ve used Xoom a dozen times. Works well. But of course the senders had to sign up for their own Xoom accounts on top of their paypal/credit card/e-check accounts.
I’m not so happy with the $25 minimum because sometimes I’d like to be able to set up buttons for amounts lower than that. For instance, if you’re familiar with the TWiT “donate” button, you can send them a minimum of $2 via PayPal (and I think they get about $2,000 per month off these donations–but of course, they’re a popular podcast).
If Xoom did away with the sign-up requirement and the payment minimum, then the’d be ok.
Xoom works very well without any problems. It’s my preferred service, actually it’s the only one I use for online transactions. Unless we get Paypal anytime soon, which is highly unlikely.
hi yugs. two points.. 1. I’d recently gotten paid via xoom to my equitable account and it went through without a hitch. 2. has paypal / ebay ever really mentioned the exact reasons why they do not service the Philippines? Thanks
Also be advised of a fact that Xoom doesn’t advertise … it is not available in all US states. I just checked this morning and here is their reply:
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We currently do not offer any money transfer service from Colorado, Virginia, Washington or Wyoming.
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I know these states don’t count as “major” to most people, but if you happen to live in one of them, as i do, it makes Xoom pretty darn uselss for sending money to the Philippines. I bought some graphics works from a fellow in Binodo for $45 USD and wound up paying Western Union $19 to send it to him … a huge, huge impediment to doing business.
Perhaps those four states have tighter regulations?
can we send money to a paypal account holder in
Richmond, VA?
Vince, now you can use PayPal to send to people in the US. But, to receive, you will still need Xoom and its alternatives.
isn’t xoom affiliated with paypal? i thought i read that somewhere? has anyone used ikobo?
Xoom Sucks. I tried to send money from my friends paypal to my Philippine xoom account. I used xoom because I was in a hurry but they cancelled my transaction. I did it twice and they cancelled it twice for unknown reason. Next time use other services like remithome or ikobo.