Change PayPal address from Canadian to USA

Question

I just moved from Canada to US and want to add my USA address and credit card with US billing address to PayPal, but not able to do this. I read this discussion from 2011, and it looks like I need to open new PayPal account.

Is it only way to do this?

I prefer to use the same account with Canadian and US credits card on it.

Answer 1

As a general rule, PayPal does not allow to change address when you move from one country to another:

Due to banking regulations, you can not change your address to a country that is different from the country you used when you opened your account. If you're moving abroad, you’ll need to close your existing account and open a new account. If you maintain residences in 2 countries, you can have 2 PayPal accounts as long as only one is a Premier or Business account.

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Answer 2

Unfortunately, PayPal doesn't allow people to change the country of their account "due to banking regulations".

The workaround is to close the old account and open a new one. That step is not so hard, but then you'll have to switch each recurring payment. Here are the steps I took when I recently moved countries:

• Log into your PayPal account using your regular e-mail address. Let's call it [email protected]. Now you want to change your e-mail address and remove your accounts.
• Add a second e-mail address to which you have full access (this is in the Account | E-mail address section). Let's call it [email protected].
• Verify the new e-mail address by opening its e-mail account and clicking the verification link that PayPal should send you immediately. (Check your spam box if you don't see it within 60 seconds.)
• Once [email protected] is properly verified, go again to the Account | E-mail address section of PayPal and then make [email protected] your primary address in PayPal.
• Once [email protected] is your primary address, delete [email protected] from your PayPal account. It is now liberated for you to use to open a new PayPal account.
• Before you leave PayPal, delete all your bank, credit or debit accounts (from the Wallet section of PayPal). This frees them up for you to add to your new account with no problem.
• Although you could probably delete your original PayPal account at this point, I prefer to play it safe and make sure that the new one is setup before getting rid of the old one.
• Log out of PayPal.
• Go back to PayPal (do not log in) and create a brand new account using [email protected] as your e-mail address and specifying your new country and address.
• Add your old debit or credit cards. There is no problem adding cards with different currencies or based in different countries. In fact, even if the postal address you specify doesn't match what is actually registered in the bank, I've never had a problem. So, just use your new country address as the address of all your cards, regardless of whether you've changed them with your bank.
• Once you've added all your cards, test your new account by doing at least one PayPal transaction using [email protected] (your original e-mail address but now linked to your new account). If it works, then you should be good to go.
• Now you can go back to your old account (log in with [email protected]) and then delete it following PayPal's official instructions. However, being the conservative person that I am, I would wait around a month to make sure that everything is OK.

In particular, after switching accounts, you might want to look at your payments from the last few months to identify the recurring payments and then re-establish them with each company. As far as I know, your new PayPal account will not recognize preauthorized payments from the old account, so you probably have to set up each one again. This is the most annoying part of the switch.