Paypal Fee Change To 2.99%; Removes Ability To Send Free Personal-To-Business Transfers

Paypal sent out changes which are coming to their user agreement on July 28, 2022. A summary can be viewed here. Below are the changes, my commentary follows:

  1. U.S. business accounts will not be able to receive personal transactions from U.S. PayPal accounts. U.S. PayPal accounts will not be able to send personal transactions to U.S. business accounts.
    • Seems like ‘Send Money’ transactions between personal and business accounts won’t have the option of being labeled ‘friends and family’ to avoid fees. If you want to send money from a personal account to a business account you’ll have to label it ‘goods and services’ and pay the transaction fee. Tangential note: by labeling it as ‘goods and services’ it’ll likely get added into the business 1099-K if they meet the $600 threshold for the year.
  2. The rate for the “Send/Receive Money for Goods and Services” payment type will be 2.99% (with no fixed fee). This pricing change will result in fee increases for some transactions.
    • The fee for ‘Send Money’ has always been 2.90% + 30 cents. After July 28th it’ll be a flat 2.99%. That saves money on lower transactions but costs more for higher transactions, the changing point being around $333. Not a huge change unless you send large amounts.
    • When you Send Money to family and friends and pay with a credit card, the fee has always been the same as for ‘Send Money for Goods and Services’. I assume the fee for that will change to a flat 2.99% fee as well.

Related note: sometimes ‘family & friends’ transactions paid with credit card are considered a cash advance. We wrote about that and how it affects each bank in this post.

View Comments (19)

  • Just another reason to ditch PayPal. I switched all of my business transactions to another platform recently. After they made that change to charge you full fees for refunding a customer that was the final straw for me!

  • That's a bit annoying. I have only 1 Paypal account which I use for both business and personal. At least Paypal allows you to have 2 accounts so I guess that means I'll now need to make an account for personal...

  • Is it possible to find out what type of account we have? Personal or Business? At some point they required to upgrade the account to be able to receive more than a couple of hundred bucks per month, but not sure if that's a business account.

    • Plus how was will it it affect other shopping apps/portals where PayPal is an option besides gift cards for cash out payments

  • You should also add a warning that if you "send money to friends and family", it is now processed as a cash advance. They made this change sometime late last year.

  • This is why they started offering a business version of their 2% cashback credit card.

  • If banks keep increasing their fees, one day congress may act and set a hard cap like other EU/Canada