It was a bizarre situation: Paypal had acquired a bank license and transferred its headquarters to Luxembourg and still, if you were a Paypal customer in Luxembourg, your only option was to withdraw funds to a U.S. bank account or to spend them. Withdrawal to a local bank account or to an account in another EU member state? No way.
At least, that used to be the situation until… well, I have no idea when they actually changed this, but anyhow: It’s finally possible to withdraw money to a bank account in Luxembourg!
As you can see, you can alternatively withdraw funds to a credit/debit card (this feature had been announced on the Paypal Blog in September).
I’m just glad I didn’t go through the trouble of establishing a bank account in the U.S. just to be able to withdraw funds.
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In other “news that I apparently missed”, Paypal competitor Moneybookers [affiliate link] is allowing merchants to accept payments with the French Carte Bleue. As far as I know, this is the first and only option to accept the Carte Bleue without the need to establish a merchant account (compte commerçant) with a French bank.
While most Carte Bleues (>90%?) are nowadays co-branded with the Visa logo, giving potential customers in France the additional option of using the Carte Bleue Nationale sounds like a good idea to me, especially if the implementation is as simple as it is with Moneybookers.
I’m about to change my company’s online shops’ payment pages and might post again in a few weeks about the acceptance of Moneybooker’s Carte Bleue payment option.