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.

 

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1,050 REPLIES 1,050

ryantate335
Contributor
Contributor

My account has been permanently limited. Why? I believe it had to do with me disputing a purchase my credit card told me was a duplicate, and because of that, I've been given the maximum punishment with no chance of overturning if customer service was right (and was very unhelpful for it by just reading from a script and ignoring what I had to say). I used this service for 6 or so years now with no issues and now I'm treated like a criminal. Is there really no way of overturning this? The irrationality of it all makes me think an "anti-fraud" bot did this. I'll provide whatever I need to in order to get my account back.

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PayPal_Donna
Moderator
Moderator

Hello ryantate335,

 

Welcome to the PayPal community and thank you for your post.

 

I'm afraid we do not know why the account became permanently limited. When our review team permanently limits a PayPal Account it is an evaluation of all the information and payments on the account, along with the risk involved.

 

-Donna

 

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ryantate335
Contributor
Contributor
No offense, but that's still very unhelpful to someone in my situation. It's kinda like being given a bill or fine you must pay and nobody can say why (obviously not the same thing, but it's still an extreme thing being done to you for reasons unknown even to the ones doing it). Paypal has a near monopoly on many internet transactions and being locked out of it with little more than a shrug is just disheartening since now I'm locked out of using a major component of the internet. Knowing my main activity with Paypal (buying games on Steam and Humble Bundle) and my great credit score, if I'm too "high risk", then I'd have to disagree. I would write to the legal department, but I just feel like it will be ignored even if my reasons turn out to be legit. Also, I wouldn't know which paperwork to provide outside of trying to explain the circumstances of what made them reconsider me from my end to hopefully show them I'm not engaged in bad behavior.
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PrePlan3D
Contributor
Contributor

I get this message on my summary page, "You can't send, withdraw, or receive money. Some of your account information is missing, so you can't send, receive or withdraw money right now. Please update your information immediately so you can use your account again as usual. Update Information Now."

 

When I click Update information now it takes me to a page that asks to update Personal Information, Business Information and Beneficial Owner but none of the EDIT links next to these headings are working!

 

I have nothing in the Resolution Center.

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nguyenthuhien07
Contributor
Contributor

Dear admin;

I am really bothered about the restricted account issue. I have verified KYC. However, it was only recently that I had to authenticate again. I have done and sent mail many times in the help section but did not see a response. Please check back for me
Best regards!

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PayPal_Jenny
Moderator
Moderator

Hi @nguyenthuhien07,

 

Welcome to the Community and thank you for your post! Sorry to hear you are experiencing issues with a limitation on your account. Usually, this type of block is released once the correct documents have been provided and verified. 

 

If you are still having difficulties, you may want to reach out to our support team over the phone by clicking 'Contact' at the end of the PayPal web page, or through Facebook or Twitter.

 

Hope this helps,

Jenny

Se hai trovato utile questa risposta, lascia per cortesia un Kudos o accettala come soluzione. Il tuo contributo nel forum aiuta altri utenti.
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nguyenthuhien07
Contributor
Contributor

Dear PP_Jenny;

I have received mail with the subject: "Request for additional information PP-008-659-529-456 RXI000" on updating the information. However, when entering the link in the tutorial mail, there was nothing to do . I also contacted the help section on this issue but it was not resolved

Please check your paypal account for me. 

Best regards!

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nguyenthuhien07
Contributor
Contributor

Dear @PayPal_Jenny , Help me pls.................................

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RATHGLASS
Contributor
Contributor

Paypal can without giving an acceptable reason restrict your account, my account has a 21 day hold on all incoming monies since October (less there fees of course) no one can give a reason why after 15 years of use (4000+ items bought &500 items sold) this restriction has been imposed, just the same old retoric that the Paypal employees regurgitate when you query why has it happened, they cannot/will not use common sense to rectify the situation, so I will have to wait 6 months before they will review my account, I'm 74 & am selling my coin collection to supplement my pension, & to make my money unobtainable for any amount of time is I think unacceptable, have given up phoning & listening to the whiney Irish brogue telling me the "computer says no" so will wait & serve my suspended account sentence until common sense prevails (or not)     

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dmba
New Community Member

Reference ID: PP-009-015-154-831

 

I have already provided the requested elements but the account remains limited. Thank you for informing me urgently what should be done to solve the issue.

 

 

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