Paypal verification and spending/sending question

[PCEN713]

Hi all,

My friend just recently moved from Taiwan to the US and wants to create a Paypal. He doesn't have a US bank or CC acc. and his Taiwanese bank account has been closed (he has withdrawn everything in cash). I thought of the idea of verifying his Paypal with a Vanilla Visa Gift Card, but I learned that you can't verify the acc. that way; it will only increase the spending/sending limit from $0 to $500(?) and verify your address. Is it possible to "verify" your address and lift the spending/sneding limit through the Visa, then buying a GreenDot MoneyPak and increasing the Paypal balance then? Also, if that happens to work, would you be able to gift/send money and do basic shopping such as buying products off eBay or Amazon? Keep in mind that he still doesn't have a US bank or CC acc and wants to see if my theory works or not. Thanks.

[snowshoe]

Basically if you cannot verify your PayPal Account, it will become almost useless.  There's really no work arounds or tricks.  PayPal will allow a couple of transactions to go thru however, after that, you won't be able to do much of anything.

It's a legal requirement, not just PayPal giving folks a hard time.  Financial institutions such as banks, credit card issues and 3rd party transaction processors such as PayPal are required by law to verify the identity of the person behind any and all Accounts into which money is collected.  This stems from the USA Patriot Act, Title III, Anti-money laundering to prevent terrorism where as institutions put into place reasonable steps to identify beneficial owners of bank accounts and those who are authorized to use or route funds through payable-through accounts.

 PayPal takes advantage of the fact that you had to prove to the bank you are who you say you are.  Therefore, by linking and confirming your bank account, the background work has already been done and PayPal has now met the legal requirements to protect themselves.

PayPal's FAQs state: To Verify your PayPal account, just link your bank account to your PayPal account or be approved for PayPal Smart Connect or the PayPal Plus MasterCard®. (Note, the PayPal Plus MasterCard was introduced in 2001.  In 2011 the name was changed to the PayPal Extras MasterCard.)

[PCEN713]

Can you define what you mean by “a couple of transactions to go through”? Exactly how much money can be transacted before PayPal stops/limits your account? My friend just wants to spend the cash on hand, and since he doesn’t have a bank account, he cannot verify a PayPal account. He seems to be pretty urgent about buying something (I didn’t lend him my PayPal acc. for personal reasons). It’s not like he wants to work around the rule or anything; he just wants to know that before his bank acc. is created and settled, he can still spend some of the cash he has. It will only be roughly 1-2 transactions, nothing major (less than $500 according to him).