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PayPal is not a bank, but it does have a significant interest in working with, and serving, small businesses.
PayPal enables payments into accounts from buyers and extractions of funds from sellers – whether of products or services – in an efficient, secure way that, though transfers can take “3 to 5 business days”, according to messages sent to those seeking transfers into their bank accounts from their PayPal account, the truth is, transfers often take as few as two business days.
And depending on the size of the transfer, there may be no (noticeable) fee from PayPal – because they have the potential to earn interest on what’s called ‘the float’: The amount they invest, short term, in overnight market fluctuations. Given the volume PayPal deals with, that ‘float’ amount can be substantial, as can their market-based profits.
(Most people don’t’ realize that a principal reason banks may take two or more day to credit cash to your account – though they are always quite quick to withdraw expenditures from there – is because they habitually use, to the tune of millions of dollars, the float. And despite the fact they are using your money to do so, you never see a penny from what they earn – which can run to many thousands of dollars in the course of any night’s international transactions.)
PayPal has never been, so far as we’ve been able to determine, been accused of mishandling funds of doing another else that should discourage a small business for using the payment transfer services.
Due to be spun off from eBay in 2915, PayPal in 2014 reported it moved $180billion in 26 currencies across 193 nations. Its revenues jumped 20% to $6.6 billion – 421% of eBays’ total and 36% of its profits.
PayPal isn’t going away. It’s a solid company to partner with for online transactions.
“Amazingly, PayPal is getting better, from a high point: It’s transfer rate has increased, its customer service is top rate. For a business type that couldn’t have existed a decade ago, they’ve done very well – and I’ve done very well using their service.” -Harold J.