I was debating whether the move to AMEX Plat (currently just have AMEX Gold and *Wood) was worth the cost when this thread caught my eye. As we are devoted BA travelers and EC members -- with little domestic US travel but gobs of transatlantic and inter Euro travel -- I doubt that PLAT offers us much more than *Wood, but I'm giving it a look.


On to the point: We pay a number of our scientist writers who live overseas via Paypal (some live in areas where the postal service is unreliable and the USD check cashing costs far exceed their Paypal fees).

Just yesterday, using the same humble gold card I sent six transfers totalling almost $6000 via paypal from the same AMEX within a few minutes time.

The only minor hassle was that initially one payment for $3000 was rejected by PayPal (paying by cc option was not available) and so I spit it into two smaller payments. After that, no problems.

Although we have no official credit limit with AMEX -- at least not a tangible one because we put almost $30,000 on our gold in one month last year during our daughter's wedding in Italy, and AMEX never blinked or called -- I am sure some limit exists. Whether AMEX breaks that limit down into things like PayPal transactions is an interesting question. I can't think what we might be doing differently that keeps AMEX security happy beyond the fact I normally (except for the wedding and extended working trips in Europe) never let the interim monthly balance balloon beyond $10,000 to $12,000 without paying it down to near zero with an interim monthly payment.

I can only assume that the PayPal algorithm is fairly sophisticated (e.g., taking into account who you are, what card you are using, whether you are verified, whether the payee is Verified or even whether the payee is "New."
Sometimes it may be that you just need to tweak the variables a tad.

We have been using Paypal for three months now, without many problems. There does seem to be a $2500 per day limit for BillPay. Perhaps this changes over time.

Cheers,
scibard

P.S. This is probably the fourth or fifth time, this month I've made such transactions and we've been doing it for three months. Amex has never blinked -- and AMEX posts the charges and the MR points just as with any other transaction.

If U.S. AMEX would just kiss and make up with the NA BAEC, my life would be so much easier. I drool over the Brit's BA AMEX.