Posted by David Chin

On the 5th of October 2007, I decided to try out Paypal’s new feature which allowed Malaysians to take money out from their Paypal account and into their Visa card account.

I happen to have a Visa Gold credit card with Citibank of Malaysia, and withdrew $100 USD from my Paypal account. Paypal deducted $5 USD on the spot ($5 is deducted per withdrawal transaction, and you’re allowed to withdraw up to $500 USD per day), leaving me with $95 USD to clear in my account.

Well, here’s what’s funny - that $95 USD cleared on the very same day! 20-jan-2008 Update: Actually, after a couple of withdrawals, I notice that the actual clearance date is five to seven business days after the withdrawal is effected.

Paypal claims to take 5 - 7 business days to process the withdrawal request, and the credit company might take another week or so to process the withdrawal at their end, but logging in via Citibank Online, I note that the funds cleared on 5th of October, 2007.

That’s impressive! In fact, that withdrawal cleared the outstanding balance on my Visa credit card, and now I get a message that says “RM 60.73 amount we owe you”.

Nice!

So, what was the effective exchange rate? $95 USD / $323.15 RM is 3.4016, rounded to the nearest four digits after the decimal point. I don’t see Citibank hitting me with any other related charges.

For comparison purposes, below is a chart showing the currency conversion rate for USD to MYR (Malaysian Ringgit) for the 5 days after October 5th, 2007:

Looks like the actual conversion rate was pretty reasonable.

With this convenience and speed of withdrawing Paypal funds, I think I’ll start paying my bills online using the Citibank Visa credit card from now on.