So does anyone have a PayPal account through Yu Shan Bank? I have heard that foreigners can set up a PayPal account with them. The purpose for me is to send money, I have a PayPal account attached to my US account and would use it to send money to myself and avoid the exorbitant fees for sending money home. I have heard that perhaps you can only send a few hundred dollars at a time though but the fees are very minimal, less than $2 USD per transaction. If you have experience with this, please share, thanks.
I think the fees are a lot higher than that (or at least they used to be). I remember I sent money from my Canadian PayPal account to my Taiwan PayPal account and they charged over 4% of the total. They claimed it was because I was transferring between countries.
Last I heard, it is possible to add an E Sun bank account to a Taiwanese-based Paypal account and withdraw money to the bank account. I’m not sure about transferring money from the bank account to Paypal, but I think you can. There has to be some special setting done when you open to account to allow it to work with Paypal.
However, someone here or on another forum reported that, while they could open an E Sun account, that setting was not possible. Either a foreigner can’t open the right type of account, or the setting can’t be set. Probably it has something to do Taiwan tracking its own citizen’s transfers, E Sun Bank being the only bank willing to comply, and foreigners being left out for lack of a Taiwanese ID. It used to be that more banks could be used with a Paypal account, but that changed with some regulation and E Sun was the only one that would comply with both Paypal and the gov’t.
That was years ago, so if it turns out that foreigners can now connect an E Sun account to Paypal and transfer money both way, please report back here, because I’d very much like to do that.
Otherwise, about the only other choice is a wire transfer with a $12 for sending and receiving (total $24). I used to send money back every other month to cut that in half.
Anyone have any direct experience with this? What does PayPal actually take when moving money to Taiwan bank account?
Can one move USD to Taiwan USD account?
Yes, but if I recall correctly, PayPal takes 2.5% for that. I found bank transfers and/or ATM withdrawals are still the cheapest options, depending on your financial institution.
Yah, PayPal sucks. Always has. They took 4 or 5 hundred bucks out of my dormant account with no explanation. And there is no accountability either.