PayPal Debit as Alternative to CC/Debit Non-Existent Rewards

[Brusilov]

I've been using PayPal (business) as my primary debit card for ages and am surprised many people don't know that you can use it while maintaining $0 balance in your PayPal account.  Since I joined early on I still even have the 1.5% cashback (immediate!) they offered at the beginning, now having been reduced to 1% for new members.  Basically all you have to do is connect a backup funding source to whatever bank account you wish and it will auto-debit every time you use the Paypal card, getting you rewards.  Since my normal bank's card pretty much gives nothing, this is a great deal for me.

[Anonymous]

I have the pay pal debit for personal for about two years. each time I use my bank account as back up it declines. I too rarely keep a balance and dont understand. I was told I need to keep an active balance!

[Brusilov]

Huh, I don't think I've ever had a problem with it being denied but maybe there's something about it that your backup bank doesn't like?

Really the only thing I find irritating is how to re-organize all these payments in a tracking system like MS Money or Quicken.  My personal banking account shows "blah blah INSTANT TRANSFER TO PAYPAL", then PayPal shows a combination of using existing cash back balances down to 0 then a separate debit to my bank account for each purchase...it gets to be sort of a mess.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for reminding me about Pay Pal.Mine is still linked to an old Wells Fargo acct.