eBay PayPal Fees: How to cut the cost on PayPal fees

PayPal charges 2.9% of the amount you get after deducting ebay fees, plus 30p for each transaction and this is something to look out for as it gets especially expensive when you have to accept payments in different currencies.

The fees can vary depending on the type of transaction, whether you’re receiving funds, converting from one currency to another, or withdrawing to an international bank account. These are the things we’re going to discuss in this article.

Which PayPal account is best suited for selling on eBay?

Offering PayPal as a payment option on eBay (using either logos or text in the item description), will require you to accept all forms of PayPal payment methods, including payments from an existing PayPal account balance, bank account transfers, and credit card payments. You can’t tell buyers that you only accept specific forms of PayPal payment.² So although you can receive payments to your personal PayPal account, it’s recommended to use a business account that supports the required functionality.

It's also especially important for processing immediate payments as a regular personal account doesn't support it.³

What’s the difference between a personal and business PayPal account?

For one time or occasional sellers PayPal Personal account is fine, but if you want to scale up your online business, PayPal Business account is recommended.

A PayPal Business account offers more advantages than having a Personal account, you don’t have to own a registered business before having one, and signing up is free.

Additional features of a PayPal Business account include, Website Payment Standard and Website Payment Pro which allows you to receive payment from buyers through debit or credit cards even though they don’t have a PayPal account.

PayPal Business account also allows recurring payments, and you may have Virtual Terminal which allows you to accept credit card payments or work with offline clients. It is a web-based application that provides your business the function similar to a stand-alone credit-card processing terminal.

So if you want to build your eBay business a PayPal Business account is highly recommended.

PayPal Fees for eBay Transactions

You can easily calculate how much PayPal will charge you with our free PayPal fee calculator for sellers or even a combined PayPal and eBay fee with this eBay PayPal calculator.

Aside from the fees you’ll incur in running your own eBay Store such as Insertion Fees, Listing Option Fees, Auction Listing Fee, Final Value Fee, and even Punitive Fees if you don’t abide by the rules of the Marketplace.

There are also fees charged by third-party processing services, particularly PayPal which is the standard when it comes to payment processing on eBay. Although eBay is slowly working on other third-party payment processing services such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, the majority of eBay transactions are still processed through PayPal.

PayPal has many fee structures according to the version you’re using and type of transaction. The company charges a set rate of $.30 (.30p) for every eBay sales transaction plus a 2.9% processing fee. ⁴

Upon completion of a sale and the seller wants to withdraw the funds from PayPal to their bank account, there are no fees involved except for instant transfers which charge you 1% fee.

However, if the funds are in a different currency, you’d have to pay 2.5% - 4% conversion fee before you could withdraw the funds in your local bank account. To reduce this cost, use Wise multi-currency account to withdraw funds in the same currency. You could then convert it to your local currency cheaper and with the real exchange rate.

For international transactions, the percentage collected is 0.50% - 2% + flat fee, and the set rate is based on the currency of the buyer.

Sellers who have to deal with high-volume transaction have an option to lower their fees by applying for PayPal’s merchant rate, instead of 2.9%, they will be charged 1.9% transaction fee.

To estimate all fees associated with eBay and PayPal, there are several fee calculators you can find online or maybe integrated with your smart phones.

Here are PayPal’s fees for a merchant account:

Save money when you sell on ebay using Wise

When a client, employer or even just a friend pays you in another currency using PayPal, the next step is to withdraw it to your bank account.

At this point, the currency will need to be converted to GBP or your home currency before it hits your bank account. It’s likely that PayPal will use an exchange rate with a mark-up added on top for this conversion, while also charging additional currency conversion fees. This all eats into the total sum and means you receive less of your hard-earned money in your bank account.

The solution? Withdraw your PayPal balance to your Wise Multi-currency Account instead of your bank account.

Check out our full guide on how to link your PayPal account to Wise and start saving money.

Start saving today with Wise