Why not a PayPal account?

[enysse]

A member on AH brought up a important subject. How to pay for your safari or taxidermy costs in Africa....while you are away from home. Everyone wants to do it as cheaply and fast as possible and PAYPAL....accomplishes this service. I for one wish it was a regular way of paying your safari and other bills in Africa!!! I'm a sick and tired of wiring money! Or carrying a lot of money on me, while traveling. And I think travelers checks are a rip off too. As a working man. I try to keep my costs low for me and my family and I would love to cut out blood sucking middle people as much as possible.

 

[desertloper]

I would suppose that it has to deal with the fees the Paypal collects for the service..money orders and wire x-fers are "free" money to the receiver.

I am curious though-I've put down deposits on my trip with personal checks--but once in country do outfitters and taxidermists allow the use of credit cards w/o a 2-3+% surcharge?

--the only silver lining in paying these invoices is the Cabelas Points

 

[enysse]

All depends on who you hunt with...if they have a credit card machine.

As far as I know PayPal is free! my wife and I use it all the time, to avoid writting checks and using the useless mail system.

And a lot of credit cards charge crazy prices for using their card in a foreign country! And some places will add 5 percent to the bill if you pay by credit card. So that option can pretty pricey in a hurry!

 

[dsweber]

Paypal does charge a fee to send money internationally. It also charges to receive payments, regardless. It does not cost anything to sign up or send money within the US.

That said, it is something I would love to see used as a mechanism for payment. Maybe the fee could be worked into the price. Many businesses give discounts for paying with cash, which is a way of saying they have the price of the credit card fee built inot their price.

 

[enysse]

I guess you are right dsweber! I thought you could exchange money between personal accounts for free....not really. I still think it would be a way to pay for a unexpected trophy opportunity in a foreign country.

I really would like to hear from as many people as possible on the subject. I would like to know everyone's opinion good or bad.

 

[Bobpuckett]

Yes I to use PayPal on Ebay both as a Buyer and seller and as a Seller it works out great no bounced checks. Yes there are fees if the outfitter were to be payed by PayPal based on the amount he would be charged a % which is still low but they can tranfer money from their PayPal account to there Bank account at no charge and as I said the fees are low. How many times have we dickered with an Outfitter for a package and he has droped his trophy fee $200 or $300 on a big animal to sell the package the fees aren't that high. as for me I think it would be a great idea.

 

[Bobpuckett]

Just to add a note if you go to eBay | Electronics, Cars, Clothing, Collectibles and More Online Shopping and look under hunting search for Africa hunting there are some working on this already. or just click on the link below.

http://cgi.ebay.com/2011-AFRICA-HUN...?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5ae1593cc7#sf

 

[Diamondhitch]

I actually tried to use paypal for my safari.

My outfitter was fine with it and paypal said it should be no big deal. HOWEVER when I actually tried to pay the bill my account got locked out and I had to spend a good portion of a day trying to get money from a South African bank. By the end my outfitter must have been wondering if I had any money at all! Finally we found a bank that could do the transfer and all was well. What should have been a simple mouse click turned into a big pain in the butt. We missed out on riding elephants and a baby animal petting cafe that my wife was really looking forward to.

I still need to get in touch with paypal to find out what happened there.

 

[Baydog]

I'd like to see it used more. It would sure make things easier.

 

[vgruan]

Hey Enysse,

I tried to do business through PAYPAL and I could not recieve any money through my PAYPAL acount in South Africa. I have been trying to get it all sorted. It will be much easier for us in South Africa too if we could work through PAYPAL. If anybody can maybe give me a few hints on what to do to get it fixed it would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Jacques

 

[Bobpuckett]

One more thing to think about and may be the reason that outfitters can't make it work is that PayPal is withdrawn from your bank and or credit cards and this being the case a lot of them have a set amount that can be withdrawn at one time or in one day i.e. I have an account setup for ebay but set at a max of 1500$ a day can be withdrawn from it to Purchase any given item. one way that may be able to get around that is if the person paying for the safari transfer the moneys needed in to his/her PayPal account even if there is a set amount this can be done over several day I don't think there is a set amount to be payed to the seller that way it is just a simple transfer from one PayPal account to another. JUST a thought call PayPal and Check it out.

 

[enysse]

Yes, I'm sure this a limit on amount of money that can be transferred out of a account...as part of fraud protection. My wife and I haven't had any problems...but we also deal with smaller amounts of money. Thank goodness, Paypal has a customer service that can answer questions.

 

[Bert the Turtle]

After dropping $12,000 on airfare (family of 3) and many thousands more on the daily and trophy fees, the $25 wire transfer fee didn't seem worth worrying about.

I've used paypal a few times for selling stuff online, but I'm more comfortable dealing with my bank. Probably just old fashioned.

 

[TERMINATOR]

All depends on who you hunt with...if they have a credit card machine.

As far as I know PayPal is free! my wife and I use it all the time, to avoid writting checks and using the useless mail system.

And a lot of credit cards charge crazy prices for using their card in a foreign country! And some places will add 5 percent to the bill if you pay by credit card. So that option can pretty pricey in a hurry!

Paypal is free to the buyer to send money.

As anybody who has ever sold on EPay knows Paypal takes 3.5% (or more) from the person recieving the money....

How did you think they (Paypal) made money???

 

[ThomasBeaham]

After dropping $12,000 on airfare (family of 3) and many thousands more on the daily and trophy fees, the $25 wire transfer fee didn't seem worth worrying about.

I've used paypal a few times for selling stuff online, but I'm more comfortable dealing with my bank. Probably just old fashioned.

+1 :thumb:

 

[KMG Hunting Safaris]

Hey Enysse,

I tried to do business through PAYPAL and I could not recieve any money through my PAYPAL acount in South Africa. I have been trying to get it all sorted. It will be much easier for us in South Africa too if we could work through PAYPAL. If anybody can maybe give me a few hints on what to do to get it fixed it would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Jacques

Jacques,
I receive deposits via Paypal. All you need to do is have an FNB account. The are the only bank that supports receiving funds from PAYPAL.
If you need any more info, PM me , and I will give you more details.

Best Regards
Marius Goosen

 

[gillettehunter]

I agree that carrying cash is a pain especially since you may see an extra animal or two..... Trip I got back from last month the outfitter had a credit card machine there at the lodge. One of the guys had trouble with it... A debit card I think. Spent 2 hrs in the bank the next day to take care of it. Great way to go if available. I don't have to pay for travelers checks so I have also used that in the past.
Went to Kyrgyzstan 1 1/2 yrs ago. They wanted new and UNFOLDED $100 bills. Only had about 5 days notice on that! Small town so not so easy to find. Bruce

 

[MarcelV]

The main reason is that Paypal only became available to South Africans a few years back and people are not yet familiar with it..

But also as KMG States the only bank i could find dealing with Paypal is FNB which kinda makes it challenging for non FNB account holders..

I believe it should pick up in the future, that is if it becomes easier to use withing RSA, currently i use Paypal on international transaction because there is not allot of companies in RSA that accepts paypal as payment method..

 

[Bert the Turtle]

The other thing that is good is to have a working relationship with your outfitter/PH, etc. I left owing about $5K last year and wired it when I got to the US.

 

[Mike70560]

I do not use Pay Pal. You cannot pay for firearms or ammo according to their policy. To me that makes them anti gun.

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/AcceptableUse_full

I have never left Africa not owing money to the outfitter. It has never been a problem wiring the money.