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Everything you wanted to know about Paypal and the Israeli Shekel

People are always asking us about Paypal and how it works in Israel with the Shekel. So, I went back to the announcement on the PayPal blog, New PayPal Currencies: Mexican Peso and Israeli Shekel. After reading over comments from Moshe,  Fabio,  Roi, Roberto,  Yeong-Ping Koh and the like, I learned more from the comments section than from the post itself. Here’s what I discovered:

  • You can withrdraw money to any Israeli-issued VISA cards or U.S. Bank. Israeli PayPal users cannot withdraw funds to a MasterCard.
  • You can use your ILS balance to pay anyone in 190 markets worldwide. You can also receive funds from buyers or family and friends in Shekels.At this time, Israeli users can only withdraw money to a Visa card. Israeli users can also withdraw funds to a U.S. Bank account.
  • They’re using the ILS instead of NIS because PayPal uses the international currency code (ISO 4217) to represent all our currencies, and the first 2 characters has to be consistent with the country code IL.
  • The functionality is no different from any of the other multi-currencies like EUR, GBP etc. So for example, you can use your ILS to pay someone in the US in USD, the seller will receive his money in USD and the equivalent amount of ILS will be withdrawn from your PayPal account after a conversion charge. If you are using the card to pay a domestic Israeli seller, then it should work like a domestic purchase. If you are using your credit card to make a payment internationally through PayPal, then it should work just like when you use the card at an international merchant website or at a foreign retail store, and there may be applicable charges from your credit card company depending on their policy.

Hopefully, cross your fingers, PayPal will keep its word to its commenters and implement local card acceptance (like Isracard), direct transfer to Israeli banks and add the Hebrew language to the Paypal site.

What online payment service do you use?

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Miriam Schwab on September 23, 2008 • Category Israel,Small Business • Tags: , , , , Comments (9)

9 Responses to “Everything you wanted to know about Paypal and the Israeli Shekel”

  • Comment by Joyce Kuras on Oct 08 2008 at 1:42 am

    Before moving to Israel, I used my Paypal in NY. The security and special codes gave me a good sense of protection. I opened up a PayPal account in Israel not realizing that they did not have the ability to transfer money into my shekel account, making this useless because I keep a NY bank account and Visa tied to PayPal as if I am still there. I will await for the change. I don’t have a credit card in Israel because I am attending school and don’t have a full time. I do freelancing at home. I am grateful for this website. I hope I can make use of this account. Until then, I will just add to my NY one.

    Sincerely,
    Joyce Kuras

  • Comment by Esti Allina-Turnauer on Oct 30 2008 at 12:08 am

    PayPal accepting shekels was very welcome news.
    I had been using Tranzilla for my online credit card processing which is not cost effective if there are few or no sales. The credit card commissions also make it counter-productive to process only a few transactions.
    I do all my shekel credit card payments through paypal now by sending a money request.

    I’m in the process of creating a new bi-lingual website that will have PayPal integrated and hopefully by the time my site is ready, PayPal will have the Hebrew interface!

    I have shekels in my PayPal account and was unsure about what to do with it! I guess I may as well transfer it to my dollar account for use in online purchases.

    Thanks for this post clarifying the issues.

  • Comment by henry on Apr 15 2009 at 4:24 pm

    they have this ridiculous rule that they wont allow shipping to Israel. So makes a lot of ILS functionality rubbish. They do payments not shipping, yet stop me shipping to Israel. What is going on?

  • Comment by Tehillah on May 20 2009 at 12:44 am

    Henry – I just placed an order yesterday with a NY company using my Israeli PayPal account (I have a separate US PayPal account) and my Israeli shipping address. The order processed just fine.

    It most likely isn’t PayPal that is preventing your order from shipping to Israel, it’s the company you are ordering from. This is why I maintain a US shipping address from which packages are consolidated and shipped to me in Israel (check out USAMail1.com)

    BTW, this blog post was full of great information – thank you!

  • Comment by International Merchant Account on May 28 2009 at 1:24 am

    Yes, I agree this is a great post.

    A couple of people have come to me with similar queries. I have recommended this post to them, I’m sure they will find it useful.

    Thank you.

  • Comment by Anatoli on Jul 27 2009 at 10:10 am

    Hellow
    But I don`t understan exactly – Pay Pal does not work with Isracard?

  • Comment by International Merchant Account on Jul 27 2009 at 2:12 pm

    Now-a-days, there are many merchant account providers who offer international merchant accounts with absolutely no sales limits and offer secure payment gateways along with virtual terminal & risk management techniques.

  • Pingback by Review of PayPal Israel Q&A Event with Nissim Ohayon | illuminea marketing and media on Dec 22 2009 at 4:44 pm

    [...] Still confused by how to use PayPal in Israel? You’re not alone. No matter how many times we write it up and try to understand all the ins and outs, and jump for joy at new developments, we still have [...]

  • Comment by rgr13 on Aug 30 2010 at 10:31 am

    I am hoping someone will see this and be able to help me.
    I am studying in Israel for the year and I need to transfer shekels to dollars so I can pay some US bills.
    I have the shekels in my Israel bank account and need to get the dollar equivalent (about 5k) to my US account.

    Do you think I can use paypal to do this?
    Does anyone have any other suggestions?

    Appreciate any and all help here..

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