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

UPDATED: June 28 2021 – Step 10 was the big change.  We just spent the last hour working through this and I can confirm this updated process is happy.

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:

Make sure you have at least $10 in your US dollar bank account before you begin or PayPal’s verification process is likely to fail.

1. Sign 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 on the small your banks logo
6. Scroll to the bottom and click LINK YOUR BANK ANOTHER WAY
7. Scroll to the bottom and click LINK A US BANK INSTEAD (yes, us US even though this is for a Canadian Bank)
8. Surf to bank-code.net/routing-numbers and enter just the name of your bank, then click SEARCH
9. Copy the ROUTING NUMBER from Bank-Code.net in the PayPal ROUTING NUMBER field
   • The Royal Bank’s US routing number is 026004093
10. In the ACCOUNT NUMBER field enter your Canadian banks’ ‘bank number’+’transit number’+’account number’ with no spaces
    • ie. Royal bank is 003, Calgary NW Transit (branch) number is 02949 and if my account number was 1234567 I would enter
      003029491234567
    • IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS: We received one report saying that the person was successful with they put the bank number in the middle instead of the start.  In that case they would enter 029490031234567
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:

THE VIDEO BELOW IS OUTDATED: We will post a new version in the coming days.

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.