PayPal - do you use it?

[Kryton]

soon im looking at buying a new RC monster truck but will need to get it from the states for various reasons (cheaper to land here and the US truck has a better radio than we get here), so i have done a bit of looking around at various places that ship from the states. that part of the research is fine.
the next step was to research my payment to the U.S, how i could get it there quickly and not have to wait a month for it to clear. not having a valid credit card sort of ruled out a lot of options so i thought id look up PayPal and see WTG with that is.
the website has a lot of info but really wasnt informing me of exactly what i wanted to know. they say you can put money in your PayPal account from a credit card, debit card, checking (thats how they spell it) account or bank account.
BINGO!!! bank account is what i want to hear so i sign up since everything is free to do and use. get to the 'enter your account details' bit and it has 2 choices = Mastercard or visa card. great.
now what im lead to believe is if you have a normal atm card with either mastercard or visa written on it then you can use it. is that correct?
what banks have card like this? the CBA has maestro written on it so that wouldnt be the same thing.
would it be easier to just go get a Debit card which will allow you to use it like a credit card but will only allow you to use however much YOU put on the card of your own money?
what do people use for their paypal account?

dont say get a creditcard either coz i cant

[Quasi]

Forget transfers from an Australian Bank account mate.

I've just been through all this crap with PayPal, to pay for my streaming host. There is no facility to transfer funds from an Aussie bank account, only US accounts. In addition, to do an electronic funds transfer to the other party, it is something like $28 (transfers to international banks are expensive).

In the end, I gave the cash to a mate with a credit card (and PayPal account), and he dumped the funds into my Paypal account, from his (the easy part).

However, to make payment for the item, you will need to use the 'Send Money' option, not normal PayPal transaction. It seems that to simply click on the PayPal link at the seller's website/electronic payment system you will still need a valid credit card associated with your PayPal account.

The 'Send Money' option is actually straight forward and does not require a credit card.

Apart from that, sending a money order, from the post office, by registered mail is the only other way I can think of (but that takes time).

[Kryton]

really? ill have to go through the site again and re-read everything. i was looking at the australian paypal website and they made it sound like i could pay from my bank account through the paypal system.
guess if i cant, im gonna have to start thinking of another way again.
dad lives in the states but he's in Cali, which puts an extra 8.75% sales tax on everything that is bought by Cali residents, so that ups my cost again by $70+US.
i thought the age of technology was sposed to make things easier!

[russellw]

Paypal have recently added the Australian bank account option (after far too long) so that those of us with US$ balances can finally convert this into real money rather than PayPal money.

It works fine for me so if you are having an issue call the AU help line.

Cheers
Russ

[professorsabre]

You can't tranfer from AU bank account to your Paypal accnt or trsf money from yr AU bank accnt. You can trsf into yr AU accnt from yr Paypal balance. You're best bet is to get a Visa Debit card. he only bank I know of that offer it is Gt George but I'm sure there's more.

Cheers

[Captain Stubing]

I've had a visa debit card through a credit union for about 10 years. I push 'credit', instead of 'savings', and don't get charged for eftpos transactions. I've got a Paypal account, but haven't had the chance to use it, and haven't fully investigated it yet.