Guess what? Another cool thing offered by PayPal, only available to Americans. Being a Canadian Etsy seller can be really frustrating sometimes when it takes so long for new PayPal features to get to us, despite that fact that we are SO CLOSE to the states that we practically are one.

You’d think paying your bill by PayPal this would already be an option to us since Etsy and PayPal are such “BFF,” but there are a lot of things that you would think Etsy would have by now (like an RSS feed with images, a Public API, a mobile site, seller shop stats…) but since they are growing so fast, I think a lot of this stuff is getting pushed aside while they deal with keeping the site from exploding on a regular basis.

Well, rant over, here’s how to pay your Etsy invoice via your PayPal account using the The PayPal Plug-In, but it’ll only work for those of you reading this in the US. This plug-in allows you to use PayPal to pay for purchases on ANY site, regardless of whether or not they take PayPal. Go to the PayPal site and log in, go to the Products and services tab and scroll down to “more products and services.” The PayPal plug in is listed there. Download and install. It sits at the top of your browser and automatically asks of you would like to pay by PayPal when it detects you checking out from an online store that does not accept PayPal normally. To use it on your Etsy bill:

1. Go to “My Etsy”
2. Go to your Etsy Bill.
3. Select “change payment information”
4. Wait for the plug in to slide down and fill in your info. Make sure you tell it you will paying here again so it keeps your info. The plug in generates a “fake” MasterCard number that debits right from PayPal, no actual MasterCard needed.
5. Each month you can use the same fake MasterCard number generated by PayPal to pay from your account. Easy! And not available in Canada. Sigh.