Can You Send Money From PayPal To MoneyGram?

Are you wondering whether you can transfer funds from PayPal to MoneyGram to send money abroad? Although possible in practice, the two services are unconnected and use totally different payment providers. Ultimately, this leaves the process long and pricey due to the many steps, fees, and hidden exchange rates along the way.

Take a look at our money transfer guide to find out how to get the job done, as well as your best alternatives.

PayPal and MoneyGram are two of the most well-known names in consumer finances. And yet, despite each transacting billions of dollars annually for their customers, the two services are completely different from one another. On the one hand, PayPal offers world-leading peer-to-peer mobile money transfers, while on the other, MoneyGram offers currency exchange services and international money transfers.

Because they're not linked directly to facilitate convenient transfers, the process to send money from PayPal to MoneyGram tends to be a long and expensive one. And while it's by all means possible, we recommend against it if your goal is to transfer money into a foreign currency at a reasonable cost.

In this guide, we'll be focusing on online transfers from PayPal to MoneyGram (i.e. transfers via bank transfer) only. We therefore won't be covering cash pickup transfers.

How To Send Money From PayPal To MoneyGram

To send money from PayPal to MoneyGram, you'll have the choice of whether to send the money to yourself or another person, as well as whether or not you will be making a currency conversion along the way. To get the job done, you'll have the following two options, broadly speaking:

Option 1: Transfer Via a Bank Account

The first way to send money from PayPal to MoneyGram is to transfer directly from your PayPal balance, via your bank account, to MoneyGram. This option is quite laborious, as it will entail several steps. First, you'll need to link a US checking account to PayPal (if you've not done so already) and then withdraw the desired funds from PayPal to your bank account. You can then use your bank account to make a transfer over MoneyGram by selecting a bank transfer as your pay-in method.

✔️ Useful for: US residents sending money to another person's bank account in a foreign currency

💵 Cost: Approx. 1.5% (per $1,000 for bank-to-bank transfers)

⏱ Speed: 2-5 days (if your PayPal and bank account are linked); 5-8 days (if not)

Option 2: Use a PayPal Card

The second option to send money from PayPal to MoneyGram is to use a PayPal debit MasterCard, which you can use to fund your MoneyGram transfer, similar to how would with any other debit card. However, we do not advise this option as there's a fair chance that PayPal will block these payments as part of its anti-money laundering compliance scheme. Even if your payment does go through, the costs can quickly add up, and if you don't already have a PayPal card, ordering one can take a very long time to arrive.

✔️ Useful for: Sending money to yourself in cash or another person in a foreign currency, if you already have a PayPal debit card

💵 Cost: Approx. $2.99 + 1.5% (per $1,000 for bank-to-bank transfers)

⏱ Speed: 2-5 days (if you already have a PayPal card); 9-15 days (if not)

Sending Overseas With PayPal or MoneyGram: Beware the Hidden Fees

As we touched on earlier, while it's certainly possible to send money from PayPal to MoneyGram, we generally recommend against it due to the high fees, poor exchange rates, and long waiting times associated with the process.

In fact, at Monito, we typically recommend against using PayPal for most transfers altogether, especially when sending money to a different country and currency. This is because they will charge you a highly variable, nontransparent exchange rate margin fee of anywhere between 2.5% and 4.5% of the entire transfer amount! Similarly, while MoneyGram is cheaper than PayPal, they are also rather expensive for bank transfers and cash pickup transfers. We only recommend them to customers who are already happy with MoneyGram and don't mind using a platform that's only sometimes the cheapest out there.

Instead, if you're planning on sending money overseas, we recommend you make an ordinary bank transfer to one of the many international money transfer specialist services available to you, most of which allow you to take advantage of fees and exchange rates that come in at a fraction of the cost of PayPal (or even MoneyGram.) Run a search on Monito's real-time comparison engine below to get the job done quickly and easily: