Account Limitations: What You Need to Know

PayPal_Mark
PayPal Employee
PayPal Employee

 

Keeping your business and customers safer

To ensure PayPal remains a safer place for enabling payments, we regularly review all accounts. Sometimes, limitations may be placed on your PayPal account, which could restrict you from completing certain actions: such as withdrawing, spending, or receiving money. Limitations are in place to help protect all our customers, and in some cases to meet our regulatory obligations. Protecting your account and money is important to us.

 

Account Limitations: What might cause it, and how to help avoid it?

If your PayPal account is limited, you may be unable to withdraw, send or receive money. There are a number of reasons why your account could be limited:

 

Suspicious & unusual activity

  • We suspect someone could be using your account without your knowledge.
  • Your bank alerts us that someone has used your credit/debit card linked to your account without your permission.
  • There are unexpected changes to your selling activities such as a sudden increase in your typical sales volume.

In such cases, we do what it takes to protect you from potential fraud prompted by the unusual activity– through limiting your account, and investigating.

 

You can safeguard your personal information and help protect yourself against fraud through some simple measures.  For example, don’t enter your personal or financial details when describing items for sale or in response to emails, and log out of sites you’ve entered your personal information into.

 

Regulatory reasons or business is not compliant

Your account could be limited for regulatory reasons. For example, India PayPal sellers need to include additional information to be able to accept payments in their account. Also, reaching a certain transaction value in your account may trigger a limit, which can also be removed by providing information required to PayPal.

 

There are also restrictions on what a PayPal account can be used to accept (and make) payments for. For example, PayPal doesn't allow the sale of counterfeit goods or banned items. So, ensure that your business is compliant with PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy .


Increased buyer issues

An increase of complaints, claims and chargebacks from buyers can lead to account limitations.

 

Following some simple guidelines can help you improve your performance and reduce the likelihood of limitations. Overall, communication is key. You should:

  • Provide detailed product descriptions and photos.
  • Be upfront about policies such as shipping and returns.
  • Ship orders promptly and track shipments.
  • Respond quickly to any messages from buyers.
  • Work to amicably resolve any problems.
  • Ship to the address provided in the transaction details page.
  • Use quality shipping materials to prevent damage.

 

Removing limitations

 If your PayPal account is limited, here’s what happens:

  1. We’ll email you to let you know –  we’ll ask you to log in to your PayPal account and go to the Resolution Centre for details on how to resolve the issue quickly, usually by providing information.
  2. Once you’ve submitted the information required, we’ll review and reply via email.
  3. We’ll remove the limitations once we have verified your account. At times, limitations can be removed by simply changing your security questions and password.

Here are the types of information and documents we may need from you:

- Supplier’s invoice with contact information

This helps us determine the inventory source and validate that you have the items that you’re selling in stock.

 

- Payment information

When an invoice is unavailable, we’ll review the following information about your payments:

  • The item or service that was sold
  • The buyer’s name and shipping address
  • Proof of shipment to verify that an order was delivered

- Shipping or Tracking information

This helps us to verify that customer orders are being fulfilled.

 

- Proof of business
This provides evidence of a valid business registration and business ownership.

 

- Information for India sellers
This is to comply with our India regulatory obligations. Provide a valid PAN, a local bank account and the purpose code in your PayPal account task board.

 

- Proof of address such as bank statement or utility bill, Proof of identity such as passport or driver’s license
This helps us verify your identity when there is unusual account activity or to comply with regulations.

 

Once you’ve submitted your information, look out for any more emails from us as we may need additional details. We’ll do our best to confirm your information and remove the limitation within 2 business days, but sometimes it can take a little longer.

 

Quick Tip: If your PayPal account is limited, don’t open a new account. It could be traced back to the limited account.  It’s always best to resolve the limitation. We will guide you through it and restore full access to your PayPal account as quickly as possible.

 

Login to Me Too
1,050 REPLIES 1,050

homerlea
Contributor
Contributor

I filled one out  with ic3.gov but just a couple days ago.  so we shall see     https://complaint.ic3.gov/default.aspx#

Login to Me Too

homerlea
Contributor
Contributor

Good luck. You are going to need it.

Login to Me Too

Rachaeld1980
Contributor
Contributor
Agree with the whole concept and reasoning behind limitations and happy to provide evidence, however I'm not a business so can't provide evidence I'm just selling unwanted goods from home. How do I resolve this PayPal give scripted answers on phone and email and aren't responding to my dm on Twitter.
Login to Me Too

urp0k
Contributor
Contributor

I provided all the necessary documents and it's been 3 weeks already and nothing happens
http://prntscr.com/jk811h

Login to Me Too

JenerSilva
Contributor
Contributor
It's official. PayPal is a scam. No not the scam/spoof emails. The actual company is an all-out SCAM!
Login to Me Too

Anonymous_User
Not applicable

paypal forum pic1.png

I hope you are wrong on this. But surely paypal operates as a bank, so the FSA should have some form of control over paypal, such as not being able to permanently limit an account and hold funds for 1 month let alone 6 months, This is not a twitter account or some online account they hold actual funds. Paypal is licenced as a bank in the EU and the UK is a current member of the EU.

 

When I am not receiving funds, I also pay other sellers via paypal and frankly I do appreciate the form of protection paypal provides as a buyer, but as a sellers it seems to be a completely different rule. Its almost impossible to shop online without paypal, it's a worrying monopoly.

 

I have to pay my ebay monthly final value fees, accrued from my total sale for May 2018, ebay is set to automatically withdraw funds from my connected paypal account between 30 May 2018 - 1 June 2018. Paypal has at their sole discretion limited my account on 26th may 2018 and I can't pay ebay. So I'll also lose my ebay account.

 

Does anyone think this is right? I have all proof of purchase of the said items and also the manufacturers number / UPC number to show it's genuinity, should they require it, they've been attempting to **bleep** me over for a long time, I should have known and withdrew all my funds well on time. I kept getting error status on my account, including being unable to send money, I called in on more than one occasion and the problems were resolved.

 

Lately within the week gone past, I received some odd payment, on two occasions before my account became limited, I was paid by two of my customers and their fund were marked by paypal as 'payment received but fund currently unavailable' the availability date on paypal came up as '1st of January 1970'. I already have a screenshot of this as proof, which I have uploaded here, I rubbed out the customer's name for privacy reason.

 

This was an alarm bell, I rang up paypal customer service to ask if it was ok to ship these items to the buyer, he was a really nice fella by the name of John and he said yes, I should and to upload a tracking number as proof of delivery afterwards, to enable this fund to be released into my account on the 3rd day of delivery confirmation, or in one month without a tracking number and no dispute from the buyer.

 

I promptly did as I was told and uploaded the tracking number to get my money released to me, on the 3rd day of delivery confirmation. I initially added the wrong courier, after my account became limited, I noticed I've added the wrong courier and I corrected this unapparent mistake.

 

The next day, I received an email from paypal stating this same transaction I rang in to confirm it's safety, has led to my account being permanently limited. Because this item was deemed a violation of paypal acceptable use policy.

 

A fair company / customer service should have warned me well before hand when I called in without resorting to seizing my fund, and limiting my account. I have also sold this same item before.

 

This is absurd. An apology from paypal, re-instating my account and making my funds immediately available would be a perfect response from paypal, this is their community forum after all and I'll expect someone from paypal to read my post. Or perhaps it's simply a case of reporting the culprit to the culprit.

 

All I have got over the past few days in light of my urgent situation, is automated messages from euaup emails. 

 

This is the worse I have been treated by a company allowed to trade in the UK, it's absolutely appalling behaviour from paypal.

 

Should I keep getting ignored by paypal and receiving automated email response, I'll take this further to an ombudsman in due course and I'll make use of all the complaint avenue at my disposal including up to claims court.

 paypal forum pic1.png

Login to Me Too

JenerSilva
Contributor
Contributor
My account was permanently limited no explanation just "we feel like it" and you agreed to our TOS. PayPal then has the nerve to say they must hold any money that's rightfully mine for 180 days. This service is an absolute joke and robbery.
Login to Me Too

AmyBat
Contributor
Contributor

Similar thing happened with me yesterday. I'm a new user. I have transferred money to my paypal account even though i haven't confirmed my identity. Silly me used my nick name (it was shorter and closer to my legal name). Now Paypal has closed my account and keeping my money for 180 days without paying any interest. Their procedure is very wrong. They are able to receive money into an account that is not activated but then unable to return that money.

 

So ridiculous!!!! 

Login to Me Too

Robertwatson
Contributor
Contributor
Yes I agree IL be opting out of pay Pal once this is sorted they have been a joke from start to finish !
Login to Me Too

Temp20230525FX
Contributor
Contributor
If you want to send it to the transferwise app i
Login to Me Too

Haven't Found your Answer?

It happens. Hit the "Login to Ask the community" button to create a question for the PayPal community.