This is the most common question has been raising by the freelancers specially those who live outside USA.
- How to withdraw the money from Elance?
- Which withdrawal method is the best for the people who live outside USA?
- How long the process takes in transferring the funds from Elance?
- Which local bank is the best in terms of processing time and least deduction?
- How to resolve any problem regarding the Funds transfer?
Well, I’ll try to discuss all the options one by one so that you could have better idea about how to initiate a withdrawal and what are the essentials in transferring the funds to your local bank. As I am living in Pakistan, so I’ll use the way I get the money to my local bank but the process is almost same for the other countries.
- How to withdraw the money from Elance? Well Congratulation for your first payment on Elance after completing your first job. Now this is the time to transfer the funds to your local bank, your credit card/Debit Card, or Paypal account. First you need to select a payment method from:
- Wire transfer to your local bank account
- Debit/Credit Card
- Paypal account
- Money Booker account
Wire transfer to your local Bank : You need to provide with a local bank account and it’s details like SWIFT Code and other information. Elance will take 5 business days to verify your account and once the verification is done successfully, you will be able to transfer the money to your local bank account. Elance usually take 2-3 business days for processing but after processing is completed, the actual time of transferring the funds, depends on your country or region.
For Pakistani freelancers, I would like to tell you that the total processing time is not more than six days but if you have your account in Bank Al-Habib Ltd, you might face problems because the money will not transferred directly to your Bank Al-Habib account. Elance will send the money to Habib Bank Ltd first and then Habib Bank will transfer the funds to Bank Al-Habib through Pay Order. So it might take 10 to 15 days.
I have been facing problems from Bank Al-Habib other than this issue. My account is in main branch of Bank Al-Habib and this is because I didn’t know about the process about how to transfer the money to Pakistani Banks so I opened my account on one of my friend’s suggestion but it was a big mistake. This is not the case of one time but I have faced problems several times regarding different things. The Bank response time is very very slow the behavior is very disappointing.
Habib Bank takes one week and so as UBL but I am not sure about other banks. If you have no Dollar account, then the money will be converted in Pak Rupees and $2.00 would be deducted on overall payment. For instance if you withdraw $100 and the Forex rate is 90.00 Rupees then you will get 88.00 Rupees it means $100 = 8800 Rupees after conversion.
I have gone through some articles online that say $25.oo is deducted as processing charges but in my case the rate is $2.00 only. (May be the other bank has different rate) so you can ask the bank first where you want to open an account and once you have all the accurate information then just go on.
In Part-2, I’ll discuss about Debit Master Card for using to have the money transferred from Elance.
Learn How to load money on Payoneer Master Debit/Credit Card
