i was wondering since I have a credit card connected to my paypal do i really need to maintain any balance in my account? Will they just charge my credit card if I don't have cash to pay.

You are correct sir! You can pay through paypal with any major credit card. 90% of the payments my business takes in are from credit cards. Not sure if paypal charges you a fee to use it though. If that was the case, the solution would be to do a lump sum transfer from your card to your paypal account to cover what you expect to purchase using paypal.

I've got my Paypal account set up to take money out of my checking account through my Mastercard debit card when I don't have any money in there. Having a credit card tied into it would be too tempting for me to spend more than I should!

Steves right Alan
but yeah they do charge just look into it ,not sure about charging if paying by paypal but
sometimes its 5% to take payment by paypal thats why so many dealers dont take it

Do note that some sellers will accept Paypal payments only if you have balance in your Paypal account. This is mainly due to credit card fraud.

But i guess if both seller and buyer are based in US, then it'll be less of a problem.

You are not charged for buying anything with pay pal. If you sell you are charged though. I purchase a lot of merchandise using pay pal and have never been a charged a service fee.

Paypal charges sellers.. something like .35c plus 3% of the total or something like that......

Like animal, I only purchase. I use credit card. Only had one "hinky-deal" where seller returned money. Gave her a negative response, her negative back response was "What a liar". I went ballistic. It just stuns me when people just bald face lie about things. It's not that I'm naive, it's just that honesty is a way of life for me. Hey I didn't graduate from VMI for nothing !!!

If you use a CC make sure the seller takes it first, some seller don't due to fees. Thus a lot of high S/H charges to cover these cost. PayPal charges seller a flat fee and 2.9% of the price to take CC regardless to if a CC is used or not. If you have a account balance in PP and you buy something the seller if set up to take CC still gets charged the fees for CC.

So no charges apply to buyers but sellers pay if you use a CC, Debit or account balance.

DAve

usually my paypal is set up to pay directly from my credit card, but recently i had some money in the paypal account from items i had sold. when i made purchases, paypal automatically used the money in the account first, and when i exceeded that amount, i received notice that the balance due would be charged to my cc.