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Earn Interest on Your PayPal Balance

Written by Nickel - 7 Comments

Here’s a quick money earning tip… If you’re carrying a balance in your PayPal account, make sure that you’re earning interest… While PayPal offers a ‘Money Market’ account that’s currently paying 4.98%, the default setting is for you to earn no interest whatsoever.

While I wouldn’t use this as a substitute for a bank account due to the lack of FDIC insurance, as well as PayPal’s reputation for freezing accounts first and asking questions later whenever a dispute arises, there’s no reason not to earn a bit of interest on whatever you have lying around in your account. So hop on over to PayPal, log in, and poke around for info on how to upgrade your account.

Disclaimer: Discover is a paid advertiser of this site.
Reasonable efforts are made to maintain accurate information. See the Discover online credit card application for full terms and conditions on offers and rewards.

Published on July 24th, 2006
Modified on March 30th, 2010 - 7 Comments
Filed under: Banking, Online

About the author: is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!

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7 Responses to “Earn Interest on Your PayPal Balance”

  1. 1
    Kira Says:

    Actually I’ve heard some pretty scary stories about PayPal customer service regarding their pseudo-bank accounts.. for my take, I’d rather just transfer the money out. You can link your HSBC or ING account to your PayPal account and transfer it back and forth whenever you want.

  2. 2
    Daytonscott Says:

    As an ebay seller, I hate to leave money in my PayPal account for fear of a charge-back. If my account is empty, I have a layer of protection should PayPal decide to raid my account for a charge-back without my having a chance to look into the issue.

  3. 3
    jay Says:

    Is paypals interest just 4.98% or is it APY?

  4. 4
    Harry Says:

    Not in the UK! Bastards. (Not that the UK is doing interest on savings, itself, at time of writing!).

  5. 5
    Devlin Says:

    Paypal sucks horribly. I’ve had my account debited by them numerous times. They will seize funds out of your account on a whim if a customer has nay issue at all. Take the money, ask questions alter.

    I NEVER carry a balance, you might find yourself not getting your money back.

    If there was an alternative I’d dump Paypal in a second.

  6. 6
    David Says:

    ‘Earn Interest on Your PayPal Balance’ is a scam.

  7. 7
    Zoe Says:

    Thanks for this exciting idea….and I was left frustrated as your “poke around” could’ve actually lead us to the link on the paypal site!

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