Hello all!
Thought I'd try to shed some light on what's happening in these situations. Before I give that a shot, let me just say that we understand this can absolutely be frustrating. I'm going to give some general answers as to where this may be coming from. When all's said and done, there's a very good chance you'll have to give us a call as it's possible we'll need to look over your account to figure out a more specific reason you can't use Instant Transfer.
To begin, let's talk about what Instant Transfer is. With this feature, PayPal pays your seller for you then we wait the normal 3-5 business days (in the US, longer outside the US) to recoup those funds from your bank. This option should only be available if you have a credit card on file as well as your bank. The reason this requires the card is so if the bank transfer should fail (since we don't know if there's actually money there when we pay your seller), we can charge your card and get the money that we've paid out back.
So, that's how it works (if you already knew that, I apologize for wasting your time so far). Now let's discuss some of the reasons why you wouldn't be able to use this.
- Your credit card is set to expire. For about a month before the actual expiration date, Instant Transfer won't be available. This is because if the bank transfer should fail, by the time we get to charging the card, it's no longer valid. Update your account with a new expiration date or a different card, and you should have that option back.
- Security model. Our security model has decided that you won't be able to use Instant Transfer for the time being. You can read a bit more about our security model here. If you have too many pending payments, meaning we're waiting on too much money from your bank without knowing if those funds are actually there or not, you may not be able to use Instant Transfer until some of those clear. And before you ask, the concept of 'too much' isn't something we'll be able to share. The thresholds that PayPal uses to protect it's customers aren't up for discussion. 🙂
- Your credit card is being denied. Before most transactions, our system runs a 'pre-auth'; this verifies the card is up and running correctly as well as making sure there are available funds on the card. When we run this, the card company may deny it for any number of reasons. If we can't guarantee the use of that card for a back-up, then Instant Transfer will be unavailable until that card is working. This would be a case where you need to call the card company to figure out why they're doing what they're doing.
Now, these will cover about 95% of every situation where Instant Transfer isn't there. As with most things, there will always be a couple one-off situations that don't fall into any of these categories. For those, or for anything else, feel free to give us a call or reach out to us on our @AskPayPal Twitter handle so we can research your account and give you some options.
Andy
