On the last day of this month - on Monday night - the transition period to SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) ends. From then on, European banks in SEPA area will no longer accept electronic money transfers using the old national bank account numbers, instead you are supposed to always use IBAN (and BIC).

How does this affect PayPal users? It is a US based company, and you probably won't be able to transfer money from your PayPal account until you have updated your bank account setting.

Has PayPal prepared for this? The f*** they have. Go see you bank account settings, and you'll note that the field for the account number accepts only 8-14 characters, while all IBAN numbers (the lengt depends on your country) are longer than that.

If you can now transfer money from your PayPal account to your bank account, fine... but I read that it hasn't succeeded in Finland any more for most of this month, and PayPal are totally NONacknowledging that they would need to do something about it - THEY don't ask anybody for IBAN numbers, so everything is fine from where they stand! Go contact your bank! I'm glad I don't have a penny over there!

Google at least gave us five days of notice to update bank account numbers - before this week, they didn't accept IBAN either! And the transition period has been going on for several years...

Thanks for the warning - it reminded me to empty our PayPal account!  They're quite welcome to screw up and freeze the £1.22 i've left in there. Go for it boys.

I strongly dislike PayPal.  If ever there was a perfect example of money for old rope, it's the PayPal business model.

Lee

I think, it must be some local problem, as today the hungarian "bank account" details says "Account Number
16-24 characters" for me, and it works fine.

However, I never transfered money to my account this way - I was simply transfered it via my registered debit or credit card.

Still not possible here - 14 chars max.

Also, "money to bank account" is the only withdrawal option I see, although I have two credit cards registered. Perhaps it would need some money on the PayPal account, but I'm happy my balance is 0.00 €

OOps, I'm a fool

Of course, You can't add any IBAN code there, as these withdrawal transfers are all made inside Your country, like a local bank transfer as Paypal sends the money from a local bank to Your local bank. For this reason, they don't need to change anything in their system, as there are no cross border money movements in this case, so you must set and keep Your local bank's details against to Your IBAN information there.