A payout to a bank account usually means a bank account first. A payout to a PayPal address just means a PayPal address.
Setting up a marketplace-linked bank payout can mean a verified bank account, sometimes a business account behind it, before a first sale has even happened. A PayPal address a seller already has removes that entire step: there is nothing new to open to receive money that is already owed to you.
Most people already have a PayPal address for some other reason entirely — buying something, splitting a bill, an old account from years ago — which is exactly why it makes a good payout detail for a first-time seller: there is nothing to set up for the specific purpose of getting paid, only something to reuse that already exists.
Sending a payout by PayPal costs us 25¢ per transfer. The seller is charged nothing to receive it — that 25¢ is absorbed on our side, not deducted from what lands in a seller’s account. It is a flat cost regardless of how large the payout is, which is part of why payouts are batched rather than sent after every single sale.
That absorbed cost is a deliberate choice, not an oversight: a 25¢ deduction on a $6 sale would be over 4% on top of everything else already taken off, which would make the payout method itself a meaningful line item rather than a detail. Keeping it off the seller’s side keeps the fee stack to the listing fee and the sale-side fee, and nothing else.
A PayPal email address replaces a bank-linked payout method; it does not replace the listing fee or the sale-side fee, which apply the same way regardless of how the money eventually reaches you. Listing is still 10¢, renewed every four months, and the sale-side fee is still the card’s own cost passed through plus 3%. The payout method is the last step, not a different fee structure. See the full breakdown at /tools/fees.
If ten sales come in at $6 each before a payout is sent, the flat 25¢ transfer cost is spent once across all ten rather than ten separate times. Sending a 25¢ transfer after every individual sale would turn a flat cost into a cost that scales with how often something sells, which is the opposite of what a flat fee is supposed to do — batching is what keeps the 25¢ small relative to the total being paid out.
The listing fee and the 3%-plus-card-cost sale fee are both already settled by the time a payout is sent — the payout is what is left after those, not a fourth fee layered on top of them. Run a full example, listing fee through to payout, at /tools/fees rather than adding these pieces up by hand.
Three numbers, in order - the listing fee, the sale fee, the payout fee - is the whole structure, start to finish.
No - that cost is absorbed by us, not deducted from the amount a seller receives.
A PayPal address is the detail involved; this page is not the place to determine whether your own PayPal account type meets every requirement you may have - check with PayPal directly for that.
Payouts are batched rather than sent per sale, which is part of why the flat 25-cent transfer cost does not scale with how many individual sales happened.
Part of our guide to Selling digital downloads.