Paypal is a blessing, because it allows anybody to send or receive money online, at no cost, and without the need of having a credit card. However, the painful part is seeing your money take DAYS to make the trip from your bank account to your Paypal recipient. Us Canucks have it extra hard:  American bank account transfers take only 3 to 4 business days, which can easily translate to a full week if you don’t start your transfer on Monday, and the delay is 6-8 business days for Canadian bank accounts. Imagine a situation where I’m buying something online from some eBay store in the US. 10 days for Paypal to clear if you count a weekend in, and then at LEAST 4-5 days for shipping and processing and whatever else the stuff has to go through before getting slammed on my doorstep by an idiot dressed in brown. In my book, that’s 15 days before I get my stuff. 15 days is over 2 weeks, and two weeks is half a month. Half a month is a 24th of a year, and a 24th of a year is pretty darned long.

Of course, one can just add a credit card to his/her Paypal and benefit from instant payments, may they be from credit card or from your bank account. However, not everyone on Paypal is of legal age to own a credit card, and not everybody has a mom or dad willing to supply the plastic. Up to this day, we poor young customers of the internet were cursed with painful waiting times, and rejection from many e-stores and sellers who don’t like the concept of waiting for a payment to clear. Until now!

This time of waiting is over. There is a way to “trick” Paypal into fronting you the cash for your online purchase while all the processing is going on between Paypal and whatever financial institution you deal with. The basis of this little bypass is a new type of card released by Mastercard, the Vanilla. This card, which I see little use if you ignore this little hack, is basically a universal gift card. It carries a predetermined monetary value, however unlike your regular gift card, it’ll work wherever theres is a credit card terminal, which includes real brick and mortar stores, but also online stores. What’s special about it is that it has a card number, a security number, and an expiration date, and it’s treated like any other credit card. From there, I’m pretty sure that you can see where I’m going with this.

To activate immediate eCheck payments on your Paypal, all you have to do is get one of those nifty little cards at any good corner store (I got mine from Couche-Tard, the Canadian equivalent of Circle K, so they should stock them), and bind it to your Paypal account like you would with any other credit card. Paypal eats it right up, and within minutes you’re sending money in a matter of seconds, anywhere in the world. Amazed, you’ll most probably start bidding on hundreds of eBay items like I did.

Be warned though. How the system works is that your bank account is still considered the primary source of funding, and your credit card is added as a backup source, if the bank account transfer bounces back. Since your “credit card” has a prepaid limit, this means that if you “acidentally” spend for more than you have in your bank account, then both your prepay and bank account will bounce back. You’ll be fucked. And by fucked, I mean having your Paypal account suspended.

So be careful.