Transfer money from the US to Korea using Paypal
I have a bank account in the US. Since I live in Europe, sometimes I need to draw money from the ATM using debit card. But I did not like to pay the fees every time I draw money. So I began to look for a cheaper solution. Since I do not have a bank account in Europe, I decided to transfer the money to Korea, where I am originally from. I found a good solution using Paypal.
As most people know, Paypal is an online payment system. By using paypal, you do not have to use your credit card number to buy products online. But most people do not use the money transfer service of Paypal. It can be useful if you have to send your money abroad, especially to countries like South Korea.
It is quite simple to do. First, you need an US bank account in the US and an US Paypal account. Once you created a Paypal account, go to My Account>Profile>Add/Edit Bank Account and Add your bank account. I have a Bank of America account, and I had to use BOA online ID and password to connect it to my Paypal account.
Now, assuming you have a Korean Paypal account(or, the person that you want to send the money to has one), you need to send money from your US account. It is simple and straightforward. Go to Send Money>Send Money Online, enter the email address of the recipient, and the amount you want to send. On Personal payments tab, choose Shared expenses(I honestly don’t know what difference it makes, but it sounds the least problematic). During the confirmation process, make sure you are using your bank account, and not your credit card(if you use credit card, you will have to pay credit card charge). It will take one week for the money to be transferred.
Now, to draw the money out of the Paypal account into the bank account, you or your recipient should go to the Korean paypal account, and add Korean bank account. Go to My Account>Profile>Add/Edit Bank Account and add the Korean bank account. Even though Korea bank accounts are combination of checking account and savings account, I chose Checking account and it worked.
So, it took a week for the money to be transferred from my US Paypal account to Korean Paypal account, and a few days more for the money to be transferred from my Korean Paypal account to my Korean bank account. It costed me $2.75 to transfer $500 between Paypal accounts, and there was no fee to draw money to my bank account(if it the amount is less than KRW150,000, there is KRW1,500 fee). I think paypal is a good alternative to bank transfer if you want to send money from the US to Korea or other countries.
