How To Add a Canadian US Dollar Bank Account To PayPal US Dollar

If your a Canadian with a PayPal account with US Dollars in it, you likely will want to transfer it to your Canadian bank and keep the money in USD.  The problem is PayPal defaults all Canadian bank accounts to Canadian Dollars and tells you that this cannot be changed.  That means you have to pay PayPal’s “exchange rate” (which they make money on) + a 2.5% fee, which means you will likely loose 3% or more.  After giving PayPal 3% to 5% of the transaction already, that means you will be losing between 6% and 8% which can be real money.

This is frustrating but there is an easy way around it, simply use the Canadian Banks US “Transit Number”.  What the heck is that you ask?  How can Canadian Banks have US “Transit Numbers”, well nearly all Canadian Banks of scale (certainly the ‘big five’, RBC, CIBC, TD, BMO and Scotia, ) have US operations so they have US transit numbers.

HOW TO ADD A CANADIAN BANKS US DOLLAR ACCOUNT TO PAYPAL:

  1. rbc-td-cheques-transit-number-bank-number-account-number-insitution-numberSign into PayPal
  2. Click WALLET (in the top menu)
  3. Click the LINK A BANK (large graphic)
  4. Click the ADD button (at the bottom)
  5. Click the small I HAVE A DIFFERENT BANK link (top left, above the banks logos)
  6. Change the COUNTRY to UNITED STATES (yes, us US even though this is for a Canadian Bank)
  7. Type in the name of the bank
  8. Surf to bank-code.net/routing-numbers and enter just the name of your bank, then click SEARCH
  9. usd-canadian-bank-account-on-paypalCopy the ROUTING NUMBER from Bank-Code.net in the PayPal ROUTING NUMBER field
  10. In the ACCOUNT NUMBER field enter BOTH you Canadian bank’s ‘transit number’+’account number’
  11. Click CONTINUE
  12. Complete the confirmation process
  13. Enjoy!

We created a video to show you the process to add Canadian Banks’ US dollar account to your PayPal account:

This is an excellent workaround that can benefit many use cases such as those online gamblers that want to place bets at online casinos that don’t accept Canadian dollars. Using PayPal at online casinos in other currencies can be great way to deposit.

Comments

  1. Colin December 15, 2020 at 10:28 am

    With BMO, there is no BMO Canada routing number, only a pile of BMO HARRIS ones…not sure what to use. Looks like from the comments that the US routing numbers has stopped working for some time now. 🙁

  2. jamalkhalid September 24, 2020 at 2:19 pm

    Doesnt work for TD either

  3. Riya May 16, 2020 at 6:19 am

    You can also find the Bank Codes from https://countrywisecodes.com/world-bank-iban-codes, and you can have any country bank codes

  4. Tammy Slauenwhite October 15, 2019 at 1:41 pm

    After opening a US based account with TD Bank today, I can’t get this to work either. I’m doing some reading on Transferwise as an option. Ugh.

    • Ian Matthews October 23, 2019 at 4:04 pm

      This does not appear to function any more 🙁

  5. Evan October 3, 2019 at 9:25 am

    Paypal is rejecting the routing number given me by CIBC for a USD account that’s been working for a decade

  6. Brian R August 29, 2019 at 7:39 am

    Can confirm… I’ve attempted this in 2019 and still to no avail… paypal help line has also been useless with support staff unable to think outside of the box… can’t understand how or why someone would have a bank account of another currency, additionally it is clear they are reading from a flowchart of support.

  7. Jay August 28, 2019 at 8:31 am

    This use to work in 2018, but in 2019 my bank RBC rejects the transfers.

  8. Jack Pan August 2, 2019 at 6:42 am

    We provide information for different bank routing numbers.

  9. andy bel February 28, 2019 at 10:13 am

    this doesent work for scotiabank, spent one month going back and forth with them and paypal, paypal saying all info was correct same with scotiabank noone knowing what it was getting reversed. Call #4 someone at scotiabank tells me its not possible scotiabank us bank account will not work with paypal it will keep getting reversed. So this is dead, does RBC still work can anyone confirm?

    • Ian Matthews March 23, 2019 at 8:36 am

      Hi Andrew;

      I just had to set mine up again and found it no longer functioned for RBC Royal Bank either… not happy 🙁

  10. mds July 26, 2018 at 12:32 pm

    this workaround appears to no longer function
    tried on 26 july 2018

    • Ian Matthews July 28, 2018 at 9:52 am

      I see the same thing… this is not good 🙁

Questions or Comments?