I use PayPal to receive payment from sponsors on this website and small coding projects for clients. Almost all the payments are received in US dollars but transferring funds into your Canadian-based US dollar account from PayPal is not easy. Exchanging US funds into Canadian dollars in PayPal is not ideal because PayPal charges a steep currency conversion fee of 2.5%. If you have a RBC US Dollar account, here’s how you can transfer US dollar funds from your PayPal account into your chequing account (it took me a few iterations to get it right):
- Log into PayPal and click on My Account, then Withdraw followed by Transfer funds to your bank account. In the Withdraw Funds by Electronic Transfer page click on Add Bank Account.
- In the Add a Bank Account page, select “United States” as Country and type in “Royal Bank of Canada” as the Bank Name.
- Enter the 9-digit routing number exactly as suggested by the graphic. Royal Bank’s routing number is “026004093”.
- Since the trick is to get the account number correct, ignore the example suggested by the graphic. Instead, enter the five-digit transit number of your account followed by your actual account number. You can also get the exact sequence of numbers (transit number followed by account number) from your monthly statement or online.
- Re-enter the account number and click Continue. Wait for PayPal to make two small deposits into your bank account and then confirm that you have added the bank account successfully in PayPal by entering how much was deposited.
- Once confirmed, your US-dollar account will show up in the To field in the Withdraw Funds page and you should be able to transfer funds in US dollars into your USD chequing account.
I am not sure if this method would work for US dollar accounts held at other financial institutions. If you’ve successfully transferred US dollar funds to and from PayPal, I would love to hear from you.
