It seems that as of this month, PayPal no longer offers international masspay payments at $1 each. Instead of $1, you’ll be paying 2% of the amount that is being sent with a maximum which varies depending on the country you are from and the country you are sending to (in most cases, the maximum seems to be $45).
Now I’m not 100% sure but it seems that the $1 option is still there if both parties are from the US, for example. Ireland seems to also be a country for which $1 masspay payments are still available but as far as most countries are concerned, the $1 masspay option is a thing of the past.
October 31st, 2011 at 3:40 am
I was waitting someone finally talk about this HUGE change that should affect all the domainers who have been using mass pay for years (I am part of them), I am glad the news be broken by my good friend Andrei.
Yes it’s official since Since October 11, 2011.
2% capped at $50 (not $45), this maximum fee depending of the source and target country and currency used.
And it’s for EACH domain in the bulk payment list.
It’s a true pain because it’s impossible to know in advance how much exactly PayPal will charge you for the mass pay if you are not sure at 100% of the country associated with a Paypal email.
We had to totally change the way people withdraw money from their ECOP wallet for this reason.
October 31st, 2011 at 4:35 am
Really bad news, especially for domainers who do many international transaction in buying and selling domains. :((
October 31st, 2011 at 5:07 am
now anything over 500$ must be via wire 😉
October 31st, 2011 at 5:26 am
Typical Paypal move. The one thing they were offering for which I felt we were getting value for money, now gone. Damn!
October 31st, 2011 at 7:05 am
Maybe it’s time for escrow services to seriously consider offering alternative e-payment gateways with competitive fees to Paypals.
October 31st, 2011 at 8:03 am
@Francois:
I found the following link, it’s a page on PayPal’s site which lets you calculate how high the masspay fee will be based on the location of the sender/recipient:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-overview-outside
According to that page, the fee seems to be $45 if you are sending from Germany to another country, for example. I played around with the locations a bit and it seems that $45 is the most common fee cap according to that page.
That’s why I mentioned $45 instead of $50. I made several masspay payments after this change took place but none of them were large enough to generate a masspay fee cap, so I’m not 100% sure that the fee is capped at $45.
October 31st, 2011 at 8:58 am
@Chandan: The cost for international wires is rarely under $30 (the average is $40), so no it is not $500 but $1,500 the amount for which use wire may start to make sense.
@Andrei
Example: China ==> Germany in USD …. is 2% capped at $50
What is crazy is the fact they ask a fee when they don’t refund mass payments and money is taken from balance. So this should not to cover fraud cost but really generate higher benefice, and $1 to $50 overnight, that’s crazy rate change!
@jayjay
I asked to create an account MoneyBookers to provide such payment gateway, and when I said it was for domain purchases they refused saying it was a too much dangerous industry. Possible others payments gateway flag our business the same way…
What I found was to offer the possibility of a wallet, so you can use the money earned selling a domain to pay others without zero fees.
October 31st, 2011 at 10:05 am
@Francois: yep, it seems that the two most widely used fee caps are $45 and $50.
For “Asia to Europe” payments (China to Germany which you gave as an example or Japan to Denmark and so on), it seems that the fee is capped at $50.
For payments between two European countries (Italy to Germany, Belgium to Denmark and so on), the fee seems to be capped at $45.
etc.
Personally, I don’t understand why they went with this approach, they should have just picked one fee (maybe $45, maybe $50, maybe something else) because that way, there would be considerably less confusion.
October 31st, 2011 at 10:07 am
Oh and I agree, there are unfortunately no PayPal competitors that would represent good choices for domainers.
I worked with several PayPal alternatives as an entrepreneur and let’s just say that even though it’s true that PayPal is anything but perfect, the alternatives are a LOT worse.
Maybe things will change in the future but at this point, no other company can touch PayPal.
October 31st, 2011 at 11:14 am
I was getting concerned because we pay all of our workers through masspay, but after looking it up, Philippines is still capped at $1.
October 31st, 2011 at 11:49 am
For international payments made from the US in USD, the fee still seems to be capped at $1.00.
“Mass Payment
Mass Payment allows you to send money to one or more recipients. With Mass Payment transactions, the sender pays the transaction fee, not the receiver. The current transaction fee for Mass Payment is 2% per payment, with a maximum of $1.00 per payment. International Mass Payment sent from China and Hong Kong incur a maximum of $50 per payment.”
Using the link provided by Andrei above, all the destinations from the US, including China and Hong Kong are capped at $1.00.
India is still not listed as a possible destination country, however.