My PayPal balance exceeds cost of item I want to buy, but PayPal won't allow it. Why?

[delegz]

If my PayPal balance exceeds the cost of an item I'd like to order (by 60 cents), why won't PayPal allow the transaction to go forward? Am I supposed to keep a minimum balance or something?

[PayPal_Adrian]

Welcome to the boards!

No, there's definitely no minimum balance required.  Can you tell the community more about the payment that was being sent and any error messages you received?  This sort of information would give our knowledgeable members an idea about what might be happening.

Thanks!

Adrian

[delegz]

I opened a new PayPal account, my second of two accounts, and used a wire transfer to fund it from a checking account. There were then sufficient funds in this new PayPal account to pay for the items that I subsequently but unsuccessfully tried to order from a merchant. The problem was that I'm required to give a credit card number to PayPal for purposes of authentication even to use a PayPal account intended to be set up and refilled with funds transferred from a bank account. And I gave the same credit card number for both of my PayPal accounts, the old one and the new one. The purchase couldn't go forward until I either closed the old PayPal account, or used a different credit card for the new PayPal account.

[PayPal_Adrian]

Thank you!  That makes much more sense now.

It appears you were running into a scenario where the seller may have a setting on their account that was blocking the payment.  In this case, it's possible that they could either be requiring the ability to complete an Instant Transfer (which can't be done with just a bank and a balance), or they were requiring a confirmed shipping address. 

Both are settings created by the merchant in question for various reasons.  Some merchants require instant payment be available to ensure that payments are received in a timely manner; this is especially true for sellers who are providing digital content or services (physical goods can instead wait to be shipped).  Merchants may also require a confirmed shipping address as a method to filter out potentially problematic transactions.

Thanks!

Adrian