I’ve been using PayPal for a while now; over a year faithfully but started a while back. At first, PayPal was solely used for my online shopping, but recently, I’ve been using it to invoice clients and collect funds for my blogging and social media services. I love it because it’s trust worthy, and a bunch of merchants take it, including my favorite, GoDaddy (I can’t tell you how many websites I have and how many more I want to buy).
Now that I’ve been doing some freelance work, I’ve been thinking about an easier method to receive my money. I definitely don’t want to leave PayPal out, but it gets tedious to have to withdraw my funds and transfer it to my bank account, which takes between 2-3 business days, especially nowadays as things are tight. One of the options is to get a PayPal Debit Card.
PayPal teamed up with MasterCard to offer a debit card to its customers, so that they can get their money faster. It’s got some great perks that go along with it:
- Because of the MasterCard logo, you can use the card anywhere that accepts MasterCard (which is just about everywhere I shop)
- Access to your money from ATMs
- 1% cash back on non-pin purchases (ooh la la, I love cash back)
- Same protection as the rest of my cards if there’s fraudulent purchases I didn’t make
- No fees for using the card
- Instant access to my monies
On the contrare my dear readers, there’s always downsides to every great thing:
- There’s a $3,000 spending limit and $400 ATM withdrawal limit. I’m okay with the spending limit, because more likely than not, I’m not even going to have $3,000 in the account, let alone to spend. However, $400 may be an issue, as in some cases, I have transfered more than $400 from my PayPal account.
- Their idea of overdraft protection is my backup funding source, AKA my other debit card. I can smell the debt from here!
- It would take 2-4 weeks to get here. I have money in there now. 2-4 weeks is a long time (not really, but you catch my drift)
So what’s the verdict?
I think I’m going to hold off on the PayPal card only because it’s still really convenient for the money to go directly into my checking account, even if it does take a few days. I feel like too many cards in too many places will definitely confuse me, and I rather have my money in limited amounts of accounts.
Do you use PayPal? Do you opt for a check, the card, or do you wait for the money to go to your account?
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- Ways to pay with your cell phone (cnn.com)
- PayPal Grows in Volume and Independence, Says Survey (pamil-visions.net)
I have a paypal card but I rarely use it. I can see in your situation (your income is in there) why you would need it. The money that goes in there for me is all extra income that I put back in my business (for now) because I don’t make enough to pay myself….yet.
Are there many situations that you need more than $400 in cash. If not then I’d go for it, if anything it can be an emergency type of card.