How to Withdraw USD from Your PayPal Account into a Canadian Bank?

NB: Those who we help – must like this page and comment as we spent time explaining this especially for you and your well-being!

For many years there was a loophole: PayPal would let you withdraw USD funds directly into your Royal Bank USD Savings account. The reason was very simple: RBC offered a much better USD – CAD conversion rate over PayPal (Especially if you went into a major branch and told them you want to match a rate).
Royal Bank of Canada is the only Canadian bank that used to allow and still allows this loophole.
Is the loophole closed now? – Partially (2016-2017). PayPal is making things more complicated; PayPal wants to make more money from your account on that exchange rate. You will now need to use an extra step in order to link your PayPal USD account to your Canadian Bank USD account.

Here is the (WORKING) workaround that enables the good old Loophole:
Considering you already have a Canadian PayPal account and USD currency that you would like to withdraw.

  • 1. Open up an RBC US savings / checking account and get your account number (7 digits but you will need all 12 digits): like 04000-4535352 = (040004535352)

  • 2. Go to PayPal and click on add a bank (Profile > Profile and Settings > My money > Bank Accounts – Update).

Do not click on Add, it will not work (feel free to click and try and start dialing PayPal with keeping that page open).

  • -Standard RBC US Routing number: 026004093 (one fits all solution)
  • -Account number: 12 digits, get it through online banking as shown on the pic #1. (ex: 040004535352)

  • 3. Call PayPal and ask to talk to a tech specialist as you have a tech problem with your bank account (or tech exchange rate specialist). A regular support rep will not be able to help, as they are trained to answer: ‘That cannot be done”…
  • 4. Tell that tech specialist that you are trying to add an account for a better exchange rate option – tell them to enable it and with them on the phone click on that ADD button. It will work.
  • 5. Once you get a confirmation – wait for micro deposits and verify the USD bank account. After – you will be able to withdraw USD cash into your RBC USD account. Please note that you should not try to use this link to deposit USD into your PayPal USD account (It should not work, it work only for withdrawals).

Since PayPal is trying to milk more out of every account these days – we suggest YOU to link such account asap, before they close it all together…

Please comment so that visitors can be updated if this method still works based on your comment date.




  • It doesn’t work.

  • What exactly did not work? Did you call them to add the account with you on the phone with an (exchange tech specialist)?

  • Helena Rybaczyk

    hey, so with this method i can withdraw paypal money in USD without the 2.5% fee?

  • Alvin Shum

    I was able to connect my RBC according to your instructions bank account but the deposits didn’t go through. What should I have done differently?

    • Dora

      Did it work??

  • John

    i called in spent half an hour on the phone the agent says they don’t have tech specialists. anybody else got that same response?

  • Midnghtrmblr

    This was a well known workaround, and you didn’t have to have a specialist on the phone when you did it. It worked for me for about a year and a half. Now, payments are no longer going through. I called both Paypal and RBC. RBC said you have to go to a branch to get a new direct deposit form or something. I’m suspecting that when I go in, they will tell me I need to set up an RBC USA account, then transfer from there to my RBC Royal USA bank account in Canada. Amazon sellers are running into the same problem with this workaround. It appears that RBC has closed this loophole also. You may want to update your article here to state that this no longer works.

  • Just to way in on this, I have been successfully using this ‘loophole’ right up until August 2017. My account was then cancelled when Sony tried to pull out $15 from my USD account. (something to be aware of – when I added my new USD account – it became the primary account to withdrawl from for paypal purchases- which I did not know about or manually choose) This caused an issue because I was over the # of withdrawls for my US high interest e-savings account at RBC – so paypal closed the account. (ie. i believe it was my fault in this instance). Here’s the good news: **I called paypal support and they were able to ‘reactivate’ my Canadian US account within paypal because it was in the system already.** They could also see the reason why the initial withdrawl was denied. For those who are running into ‘account closed’ issues with their Canadian USD accounts in Paypal – definitely call in and have a customer support agent simply re-activate the account! At least it worked for me. As far as I can tell this is all still working as of August 2017.

  • Dear All,
    1. The “method” still works!
    2. Kelsey Tonner: YES! You can not add funds using your paypal connected USD “loophole” account. Just make sure you have finds in both paypal currencies just in case a dispute comes along.
    3. PayPal now has “cross border” fee. It is 0.8 to 1% for all sales you did In the US. Thus you can expect to share as much as up to 3% of your transaction with paypal (which is crazy…).

  • Has anyone tried this recently? My RBC USD account is 9 digits (not 7 or 12). I’ve tried adding the RBC US account to my Canadian PayPal multiple times and it hasn’t worked. PayPal support was useless.

    • Reminder: you will need to call them and ask for a tech specialist to assist you with currencies and conversion rate (as for a supervisor), have the info ready – type it in and when he says it’s a go – you GO and it will work.

  • Jodi Thibodeau

    Hey there and specifically to WBC … So you are saying I CAN NOT use an RBC USD savings account to deposit USD money into my Canadian Paypal account? It’s for “withdrawals only” ? Surely it should work both ways. I have USD in my Canadian USD bank account. I should be able to take those USDs I have and deposit them into my PP account still as USD. Is there a way to do this? Please confirm. Thank you in advance.

    • When this thing is not working – we will update the blog post. This method is still working. Reminder: you will need to call them and ask for a tech specialist to assist you with currencies and conversion rate (as for a supervisor), have the info ready – type it in and when he says it’s a go – you GO and it will work.

  • Kingsley

    Confirmed working.
    I logged into my account, went to “Contact Us” > Account profile and set up > Bank Account > Link and Confirm > Scrolled to the bottom and clicked “Call us”
    Called the number, entered the onetime passcode and gave the command “Add a bank account”. Then it asked if I was adding a Canadian bank account. I replied “No”
    It then asked for my bank info, but I asked to speak to an agent.
    When the agent answered, I said I wanted to add a bank account. I didn’t even ask for a tech specialist – perhaps I got lucky and the agent knew what she was doing. I supplied the US routing number 026004093 and my bank account. Somehow, she found 2 accounts, but was able to select the correct account, confirm it and set it up for me.
    I now have the RBC US account linked to my paypal!

    • Adam In Toronto

      When you gave your bank account info, did you supply “transit# + account#”, or “transit# + bank# + account#”?

      • Adam In Toronto

        Update: The agent I got on the phone was able to figure out what to do in a few minutes. She had me try to add the account again, and I no longer saw the error – instead I got to the Confirm Account page. I now have to wait a few days for the confirmation deposits to appear before I can return to paypal to verify my account.
        Btw, I used “transit# + account#”.

  • Kev

    What Phone number have you call ?
    Paypal Canada or USA ?
    What kind of RBC account do you have (Personal or Bussines) ?