Last week I wrote about how my experience of using Public Bank Visa Electron debit card did not work with Paypal when I wanted to link the card to my Paypal account. I’ve finally figured out what happened.

The Public Bank Visa Electron debit card works like a prepaid credit card. That means you need to load money into the card before you can swipe it for purchases. Upon approval of your application for the card, Public Bank requires you to load the card with a minimum of RM25 before they will send the physical card to you.

When I received my note to do this, I loaded RM30 into the card. Not long after, I received my card from Public Bank and proceeded to register it with Paypal. For Paypal to verify the card, you need to follow its steps to link and confirm the card. When you agree to link the card by a click of the mouse button, Paypal will charge US$1.95 to the credit card that will be refunded later on. This is where my earlier glitch came about.

I called Public Bank (as suggested by you clever bloggers, thank you!) and found out that there must always be a balance of RM25 in the card. I loaded it with RM30 and that means that I can only charge a maximum of RM5 to my card. Any transaction with an amount that will eat into the balance of RM25 on the card will not go through. Since Paypal charges US$1.95 for the linking process, it is equivalent to RM6.80. I only have RM5 available in my credit card and thus, I was unable to complete the transaction required by Paypal. I made a run to top up the card and have now successfully linked the card to Paypal.

So if you are applying for this card and linking it to Paypal, make sure you top up enough the first time round for your linking charges by Paypal to go through. It was a rather silly mistake but one that must be learned. I hope this mistake of mine will help save you time should you go through this process too.