This is my first guide and felt this would contribute to folks outside the U.S Some times when you are buying in big (read as high amounts of money for a forklifter, a car etc) your credit card total credit can´t fulfill the total amount. Paypal is, if not the best way to send payments, one of the best for sure, in the commodity of your house you can have everything done with a few clicks, but thats for reasonable amounts of money, what happens then if you are going to pay about 20 K or above? There are two main options for this, or three, if you trust the seller (eg: he has an excellent feedback & sold similar items in the past or has a good reputation as a seller) then I recommend using a Wire Transfer, this is a direct bank deposit into seller´s account from yours. On the other hand, the trick would be to convince the seller to use this method. It happened to me that a seller would not accept a wire transfer because his bank adviced not to give account information to foreign people because there was a great risk of getting funds stolen. Nothing more far than reality, the only one with the possibility of retiring funds from an account is the owner, ask your bank account assistant and he will explain better than me. Something to have in mind when doing a wire transfer is to add extra money for the banks fees, commonly there are two fees one from your bank and the other from seller´s bank, so ask your seller and your bank the percentage of this fee, if not, you will be surprised with the seller arguing he did not received the total amount, this is because the bank gets those fees from the money being sent. Wire transfer commonly clear in about 3-5 work days Now, what happens if the seller is not that trustable, the answer is a Letter of Credit. I do not recommend this as a fast method for payment, most of the times it goes smooth, but can take more days than a wire transfer, but for sure is the safest way for both parties. A letter of credit is a contract, between you and the seller. Special points can be added to that contract, but the most sense and common are: The bank acts as a third party and judge (sellers bank or an important bank in the U.S, ask your bank) The bank will first receive the money from buyer and notifies seller of this, but it will not release the money until the seller release the merchandise to the accorded shipper (note that notification to the buyer´s shipper is vital in this, as this is a major player, a trustable one is desired). Once the seller give the goods to the shipper, bank is notified of this by the shipper and then and only then it release the money to seller. Note that in this case, seller can´t do tricks or do a fraud if he wants the money, because there is a contract to follow in order to achieve this. Finally, a cheque would be an optional method, but i do not like it very well. When you are overseas and need to pay by cheque to a U.S seller for example (because he ask to do so) obviously you can not use a cheque you use in your country, you need one that can be usable in the U.S. So, it is necessary to go to your bank and specifically ask for a cheque payable in the U.S, in U.S funds. Commonly banks have cheques for this purposes and the process can be delayed because it is not as common as a wire. Then you will need to send the cheque, and here I recommend putting it inside an envelope, cover both sides of envelope with carbon paper, and use a courier like FedEx, UPS, DHL or other with the express document service and special envelope. USPS works flawlessly inside the U.S, but public mail services from other countries that connect to them, specially in Latin America where i live tend to be slow and not trustable as a courier, plus with a courier you can track your shipment and is faster. The counter part of this process is that it would take a week if you are fast, I mean call the bank to see if the have the cheque ready, catch the plane of your courier (not everyday frequencies!) and add the shipping time of 3-4 days. I did it once and worked ok, you will need to wait the seller to clear the cheque with his bank (add 2-3 days for this) I hope you found this guide of any use for yourself, it is based on self experience and all three methods explained where used with success. Living outside the U.S demands more options at the moment of payment. Next guide will be how to save on shipping if you live outside the U.S, and what are the options i most use for around the world. Note that despite i talked about the U.S, because it is the place from where i buy more, this applies to other countries Finally I would like to hear from your experience and thought on this matter or other being a foreign buyer.