Save 40 percent on PayPal payments with a trick – is that legal?

Anyone who uses PayPal may have heard about it.

A trick is said to save up to 40 percent of the total amount when payments are made via the service provider.

How this is supposed to work and why caution is required.

Munich – Tips and tricks for saving money are spreading on the Internet.

A method is currently making the rounds that are intended to enable PayPal customers to save.

For payments via the service provider, up to 40 percent should be possible.

Instead of 100 euros, only 60 euros would be charged.

Supposedly it works like this: Someone deposits a VISA credit card with PayPal and chooses Argentine pesos as the currency instead of euros or dollars.

Anyone who then makes a transaction transfers the full amount, but only gets around 60 percent of the value deducted from the account,

writes

How does the 40 percent PayPal trick work - is it the exchange rate?

Because of the economic crisis in Argentina - the country is struggling with inflation of 95 percent - the country would have introduced a special exchange rate for tourists, writes Business Insider.

If you pay with a foreign credit card, you get a cheaper price for the purchased product, and amounts are billed more cheaply.

With the difference and the trick to settle the currency, money could even be conjured up out of nowhere.

If you want, you could use the prepared account to send a certain amount directly to another account.

It should then arrive in full, while significantly less is deducted from oneself.

Users test PayPal trick – does it work or not

"We tried it out ourselves on the evening of January 23, 2023 and bought software for 186 US dollars via Paypal with an ING Diba Visa credit card," reports

.

Previously, the team would have removed the card from their PayPal account and then re-added it using the Argentine Pesos (ARS) currency.

“186 US dollars correspond to approx. 171 euros at the current exchange rate.

However, only an amount of 100 euros was debited from our account.” Users of the MyDealz community are also said to have confirmed that the trick works.

A reader of the tabloid 

 reported that he had transferred 1,000 euros to his wife via Paypal's friends function and only 600 euros were debited.

Is the PayPal trick legal?

What does the expert say?

Can this be legal?

"Customers probably have nothing to fear from criminal law ,

" says lawyer Christian Solmecke to

You don't commit fraud, you just use a loophole in the system.

The terms and conditions of VISA do not prohibit such transfers either.

However, the first credit cards are probably already being blocked in order to prevent further exploitation of the gap.

VISA must claim the damage from the Argentine government.

However, the lawyer advises caution.

“The background to this is that according to PayPal's terms and conditions [...] 'no currencies may be converted for speculative transactions [...] or other activities [...] with which money is primarily earned on the basis of exchange rates or should be generated.'

Pure transfers, with which money is generated from 'nothing', could therefore be booked back again.” This should not apply to “sales contracts in which money is not primarily generated, but goods are bought”.

Customers should know that Visa may be able to charge the actual amount.

After all, the probable exchange rate is not binding, according to

.

However, whether refunds are possible depends on the circumstances and conditions of the promotion.

It remains to be seen how long the trick will work, how VISA and PayPal will react.

If you want to try the trick, you should only buy products for which you would pay full price.