Paypal (Ebay) - $US Balances- in Canada

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Here is the solution.....there is RBC Centura in the USA and RBC Royal Bank here in Canada.  The Centura account is a US account and The Royal Bank is the CDN US dollar account.  You can open a Centura account at the Royal Bank here in Canada and do not have to set foot in a bank in the USA.  When you log into your online banking at RBC Royal Bank you can access you RBC Centura account details as well and transfer your balances between the borders.  If you keep a balance of $700 in your Centura account the 3.95 monthly fee is waived.  

CWT,

Thanks for your post.

Sounds like RBC has a good offering if the account can be set up in Canada is a USA USD acct as opposed to a CDN USD account and Paypal will accept it as I outline below.

Please confirm if you have you succeeded in verifying this is a solution by adding this type of account to your own Paypal account via selecting USA (as opposed to Canada) as the country from the main drop down menu on Paypal under "add a bank account".  May I ask how many digits appear on the bottom of the cheque? Paypal's platform will only accept it as a true USA account if the cheque has the requisite number of digits associated with a proper US account, ie. a 9 digit routing# and a 10 digit account # as opposed to the digits associated with a CDN Bank account: a 5 digit bank transfer#, a 3 digit institution# and a 6 digit account#.

Please confirm all of the above before we conclude this will also work as a solution.  If so I would also recommend this as well as the confirmed to be true solution I provided. If you haven't reported back by Monday mid-day I will assume it was only a hypothesis you presented and I will investigate this RBOC offering and put it through the Paypal test myself and report back to the forum with the findings.

I think it's essential to maintain a very high standard/threshold of verification of claims/facts in this thread given some of the misinformation that has appeared in it thus far.

Thanks
Troy

I couldn't resist so I did a little digging myself and will share this link with the forum http://www.rbccentura.com/personal/snowbirds/index.html  The menu on the right side of the page also has some good information.

On the face of it this RBC product offering looks very good indeed. It would appear this is in every way a way to get a USA USD account, however, it needs to be confirmed that this account can in fact be set up here in Canada through a Royal Bank rather than a Royal Bank Centura branch in the USA otherwise it is simply a repeat of the solution I provided.

I would have to say at this point this RBC Centura account may very well in fact be yet another solution for all Canadian Paypal users who do not want to continue to have paypal eat away at the currency exchange rates.

Until I see or hear that Paypal has accepted this account in the add a new USA account part of their platform and see or hear someone actually walking into a local Royal Bank and walking out with a USA US$ account from a Canadian Branch location I will however remain suspicious.

It is very refreshing to finally have a new idea presented rather than spend the time convincing that an existing proven solution works. It also great to see that RBC is coming up with some innovative products & corporate structure. This certainly appears to be more seemless and more of a whole product offering than what Chicago based Harris Bank and its parent The Bank of Montreal have been able to put out.

CWT may have provided a very key addition to this thread and I would encourage you all to do your own research. I can say that if I didn't already have a US$ account in the USA and needed one for the first time I would be investigating the RBC Centura account as a potential key primary solution to Hudson's initial problem (the Topic of this thread) - even as a former employee of TD Canada Trust!

Thanks
Troy

I know several folks who have walked into an RBC in Canada and opened Centura accounts.  They were all existing clients at RBC so it was not too difficult for them.  However I do not know how it works for non existing RBC clients.  I will have to ask around about them setting up on Paypal.  They were older ppl and I doubt they do much on the internet.  In theory it all does sound possible.... I have a cdn USD account which we know does not work....I have considered this option for awhile but not gone through with it as I would not carry the $700 balance to avoid the 3.95.

Thank you,

That was helpful and as expected.

I will test the hypothesis or theory as you say and as promised I will report back to the forum.

Confirmation is required that Paypal's platform will accept this as a US account before we can confidently claim it is another solution to the problem Hudson presented. The only way to confirm this is to actually open an account and add it to the Paypal platform.

I will keep my fingers crossed, as on the face of it I like this product offering, a lot.

Thanks for bringing the idea forward so it can now be properly tested.

Troy

Here's another angle to this:

At one time I had a USD account at the Bank of Montreal in Vancouver.  The name and Vancouver address were printed on the cheques.   The cheques were also preprinted with "Payable in US Dollars through Bank of Montreal..." and then listed the address of the BoM's branch in New York.

The cheque encoding numbers didn't at all match the numbers on my regular CDN$ accout from the same branch.  They appeared to be routing numbers for a US bank.  Perfect for PayPal, I thought.

But no, PayPal still would not accept it.    

Right.

Thanks for the information which further underscores the reason not to jump to premature conclusions.

Troy

Appointment set up for tomorrow at 10am AST at RBC.

I will advise how it goes. If the bank is confident the account will work I will then set one up and initiate a complete end to end Paypal test and report back as promised.

This exercise is being completed for the benefit of those who seek an alternate solution to the verified to be true one I presented and to test what was originally presented as "The Solution" by CWT which was subsequently discovered only to be a hypothesis in need of serious testing.

Thanks
Troy

Status report:

Opened a Centura Account this morning, the product offering was called RBC Access USA Service (Centura).
$3.95 monthly fee, waived if you maintain a $700 monthly balance. They also have a premier version of this account which carries a $25 a month fee, waived if you keep $2500 a month on deposit.

The set up went reasonably well but I walked away empty handed. They do the application at the local RBC branch but then they have to fax it offsite to Centura reps in the USA.  Your "package" then arrives in the mail sometime later, included is your new account info and cheques. You cannot get an account # or counter cheques when you go into a local RBC and open the account, all you do is paperwork initially. I guess that is to be expected somewhat given that Centura is a subsiduary of RBC.

The product offering itself appears to be as good as I hoped at this point and when my package arrives I will attempt to initiate the Paypal setup and test withdrawing and depositing to and from the account.

Based on the setup process I would give the advantage to my USA bank in Calais Maine so far.  No fee account & I was in and out of my Bank in the USA in 15 minutes or less (W8 form included) and had my account open with cheques in hand and had deposited money onsite, instantly, and all subsequent electronic paypal deposits/withdrawals have worked flawlessly.

I suspect the RBC product offering will be stronger however the rest of the way, we shall see. No conclusions can be drawn yet.

Thanks
Troy

...

My pleasure,

I serve at the pleasure of the forum on this task.

Troy.

You're too humble, Troy. Take credit where credit is given!

Cheers to the guinea pig!!!  Ihope it does get accepted on paypal...i eagerly await the result...

Some 10 days later I am still waiting for my RBC Centura "package" to arrive in the mail.

Could have driven to Calais Maine and back 10 times easily by now to open a 2nd account if I wanted to. Or I could have driven to pick Hudson up and then drove him to a USA bank to open his account, then driven him home, and then have his Paypal funds withdrawn and in his new USA based US$ account and have written a cheque to himself and transferred them into his Canadian based US$ account if he wanted to.

So far I know (with 100% certainty) a USA based bank in Maine that can offer a solution to the problem presented in this thread in 15 minutes or less (onsite). The alternative RBC Centura solution I am testing for the forum is, including this weekend coming, at least 13 days to setup.

I will report back once I receive my package and will fulfill the before mentioned promises to see this through, end to end.

The truth is out there and I will deliver it to you and continue to work towards driving away any false information in this thread.

Troy

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