Default primary payment option

[Basildon]

Hi. Can I swap my primary default payment option from Bank Account onto my Credit Card? Both are primary, but it's always taking from my Bank Account. I don't have enough founds for my next purchase. 

[snowshoe · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately you cannot.     Here's how things are designed:

When you make a payment, the money is first taken from your PayPal balance. If your balance cannot cover the full amount of your payment, the rest of the money can come from PayPal Credit products, your linked bank account, or your personal debit or credit card.
You can choose your payment method during the send money flow.  Here's what to do: 

1. During checkout, click Change or More Funding Options under Payment Method on the Review page.
2. On the next page, select the payment method you want and click Continue.
3. The payment method you selected will be used after your PayPal balance.

Tips:

• Adding a debit or credit card or bank account to your PayPal account gives you more ways to send money.
• An instant transfer is an automatic withdrawal of funds from your bank account to cover the cost of a purchase.
• The default method of payment - after your PayPal balance - may vary depending on what funding methods are available on your account.
• If you choose to change your payment method, you must do this for each payment that you send.

[bmorgan98]

I have to say it is so annoying to click change when the option should be presented to you immediately to choose 1) what payment method and 2) which address, rather than that annoying little change text hyperlink (because it has to load up another website which can be very slow at times). Why is paypal so awkward in this?? Even the paypal mobile android app is like this. Its just so irritating I wish the paypal support would look into a better design regarding this.

[HeatherAlex]

This doesn't help. I have a linked bank account and a credit card. I want the card to be my primary payment method, but I can see no way to do that. I change it for each transation, but I now have a recurring annual transaction to be taken automatically - I suspect I will have no way of changing the payment source 😞

[kernowlass]

As already stated by snowshoe above you cannot change it....if you have a bank account then it will always be used as the default method unless you have funds in your paypal balance.

[HeatherAlex]

I'll be deleting my bank account from the payment sources then...

[kernowlass]

That may solve it, or cause more problems, not sure which.

[yuval_cohen]

I also found that annoying.

Just found the solution!!!

Do the following and you can select your credit card as your primary payment method...

Within Paypal, browse to Profile > My money (left-hand side menu) > and under "My preapproved payments" click on "Update." On this page, you'll see a listing of your active Paypal subscriptions. Click on "Set Available Funding Sources" and uncheck the payment methods (ie. bank account) you don't want to use. If you only leave your credit card check, it will default to that.

[wendyms]

Thank you-that was really helpful

[davidc27]

I was interested to read your reply to the original question because I had  a similar query about default payment methods - but in my case I want the deafult method to be my Paypal balance - and it never is! My default method is always my bank account, even when I have more than enough in my Paypal account balance. I know that I can change it - but its irritating to have to do that every time. Is there a way to reset so that the deafult is Paypal balance?