PayPal is a convenient tool for online purchases, but you can also use it to send money to friends, pool resources, support charities, pay contractors, and more. You've probably seen all of these tools on your PayPal account before, but it might be time to give them another thought.

Sending Money With PayPal: The Basics

Most of us probably got PayPal in the first place because it streamlines online purchases. Indeed, PayPal web APIs are so fluid that you might use the platform regularly and hardly visit your profile. It's so user-friendly that you probably don't realize how powerful it really is.

Almost all of the features that this article is going to explore are on a second-level page. To get there, select Send & Request from the banner menu at the top of the page. This takes you to the Send page. The column on the right side of the window takes you to most of the ways that you can use PayPal to send money.

PayPal Send page

The Send money field in the center of this page allows you to easily send money to a PayPal account that you have already interacted with. You can also search for PayPal accounts by name, username, email, or mobile number in the text field provided.

Let's go over some of the other ways you can use PayPal to send money.

1. How to Send to a Bank Account

Found at the top of the column menu on the right, Send to a bank account allows you to send money from your PayPal account to another party that doesn't have or use PayPal. With this method, you can deposit the funds directly into their bank account. This service requires Xoom, a separate service within PayPal.

Creating a Xoom account

When you click the Send to a bank account button, a new page opens up that asks you to accept Xoom's permissions. Once you've done that, follow these steps to send money to another bank account through PayPal and Xoom:

  1. Select the country of the person that you want to send money to.
  2. Input the amount of money that you want to send (includes a small service fee).
  3. Select whether you want to send funds to a debit account, bank account, or cash pickup site.
  4. Enter their account information.
  5. Proceed to send your money.

2. How to Convert PayPal to Cash for Pickup

When you select Send cash for pick up, PayPal redirects you back to Xoom. So, if you haven't already, you'll have to accept Xoom's permissions.

In fact, selecting this button from the menu on the PayPal Send page is just a shortcut to step two in the sequence above. From there, the last two steps are the same.

Send for cash pickup with Xoom

You can skip the country of origin on this one because Cash Pickup through Xoom is only offered through retail locations within the US, whereas debit card or bank deposits can be done anywhere.

3. How to Respond to PayPal Invoices

PayPal's Send page isn't actually just for sending money. You can also select Send an invoice from the column menu to charge others for goods or services. But, to stick with the theme of the article, let's flip this idea and talk about paying others when you receive a PayPal invoice.

Paying for an invoice is as easy as opening PayPal's email that alerted you about the invoice, and clicking the Pay Now button within it. If you don't already have a PayPal account, you'll have to create one to complete the transaction. Alternatively, if you didn't receive the email from PayPal, you can always log in to your PayPal account and head to the Activity page to see any outstanding invoices.

Related: How to Use PayPal to Manage Your Side Hustle

Keep in mind that you can send money for goods and services without receiving a PayPal invoice. However, PayPal invoices allow the sender to itemize for multiple items, account for and display additional charges like taxes, and record physical addresses in ways that using the standard send feature doesn't allow.

Even if you do small business with others over PayPal, recommend that they invoice you. This also allows PayPal to make more convenient financial records for them.

4. How to Send a Digital Gift Card

Choosing to Send a digital gift card with PayPal is quite the experience. The platform offers gift cards from over 300 venues. Search, browse by category, or read a gift guide of suggestions—whatever you need to do, PayPal has you covered.

A selection of PayPal digital giftcards

Once you have selected a card, select the amount you want to gift, fill out the email address of the recipient, enter your name, and fill out a personal message. You can also select whether the card is digitally delivered on that day or at some point in the future.

5. How to Donate to Charities With PayPal

The final option in the Send page column menu is to Send and receive donations. If you're feeling charitable, this option lets you search for charities to which you can send funds. Search by name, or filter by category or location.

Donate to charities with PayPal

From there, donating to a charity works similarly to buying a gift card. After the process is complete, you receive a receipt from PayPal. PayPal also gives your email to the charity so that they can reach out to send their thanks as well.

There is one last way to send money via PayPal that doesn't use the Send page. PayPal users that opted in to optional features can send you links that allow you to deposit funds into pools for specific causes, or directly into their accounts.

They may send you a link in an email or you may see it on social media. How you interact with the link can vary slightly based on how it was made, by whom, and for what purpose. For example, when contributing to a pool, you can choose to make your contribution anonymous.

How Do You Use PayPal?

PayPal is an incredibly useful platform that many users take for granted. As you can probably tell, there are lots of different ways that you can use the platform to move your money where it needs to go.