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

fedup741
Contributor
Contributor

perhaps Paypal would do better if it actually 

1. answered it's phones

2. actually answered it's messages

3. sorted out it's IT system

4. gave a thought to it's customers.

 

hopefully a major fine from it's regulators might actually get it to stop chasing profits, and actually provide the service it is actually legally required to provide.

 

perhaps a few criminal convictions of the various heads of departments / directors might, just might, focus their minds, assuming they have any interest in anything other than stealing from their customers.

Login to Me Too

Val1948
Contributor
Contributor
My account as had limitations on it for over a week I’ve done what PayPal asked and sent information and not heard nothing back I’ve emailed them and had no response
Login to Me Too

PayPal_Olivia
Moderator
Moderator

tHi @Val1948,

 

I'm sorry to hear that you've not yet had a reply regarding your limitation. If you completed all the requested steps and it has been a week since the completion of those steps, reaching out to customer service is the right step. Response by email may take some time. For time-sensitive queries, calling by phone may be the best option. Click Contact, then Call us, then log in or call as a guest to get the number.

 

I hope this is resolved quickly!

 

Olivia

 

If this post or any other was helpful, please enrich the Community by giving kudos to its author, accepting it as a solution, and/or coming back to assist others. Members make this Community great!
Login to Me Too

JoyfulCP
Contributor
Contributor

The Paypal contact by phone support is down. They don't answer emails, they don't answer on Facebook or Twitter and now the phone is also not an option. And my case is not being reviewed and account keeps being limited at this time - without any grounds. 
So, I see it as illegal practice

Login to Me Too

Temp20230525FZ
Contributor
Contributor

@PayPal_Olivia 

 

How about the people that dont know how to fix there limitation issue and you cant get intouch with anyone to find out what you did and have to do to fix it.

 

What about those people!!!

Login to Me Too

Sierra307
Contributor
Contributor

I would like to express my frustration that paypal has now held $19,500 of a client's payment to me (which was processed on 2/19/20). I've tried to jump through the hoops required by paypal to release the funds. This has been difficult enough as the items were long lead time tile and I've had to scrape together payments to vendors using my credit card. Paypal has asked for receipts from vendors to show I paid for the tile and plumbing fixtures, they are also asking for shipping receipts. The website is not allowing my to upload the shipping receipts - those that I have ($12,000 of plumbing fixtures are currently in a storeroom of a plumbing showroom now ordered to shelter in place). I'm furious that I'm incurring credit card interest because Paypal will not release these funds to me. It's also incredible that Paypal customer service insisted to me that my funds were accessible, that they were not "on hold" rather they were pending until I provided all information to them...(which in plain speak means "on hold") I'm a small business owner, an interior designer, I collected $19,500 from my client and I paid $19,500 to vendors. I did not make any money on the sale - in fact, I lost money with the fees. I'm still waiting to be able to use my balance - even when all the tile is at my clients' house and the rest of the plumbing fixtures are in a closed storeroom just miles away. So much for supporting small business owners. vendors beware!

Login to Me Too

jrenner1990
New Community Member

Dear PayPal, My account has been limited and my funds of over $6,000 held and frozen definitely for no reason! and I am waiting on a reply but cannot get through to your call centre as it's closed! There is talk that Paypal have been closing many peoples accounts and emptying out their accounts into their own and denying them access (I have seen evidence of this) and $millions of dollars are being taken from many innocent citizens. I have been seeking legal advice and going to lodge a complaint the financial ombudsman! Can you please look into my account and get back to me please on the actual reason why my account was limited. I have genuine sales over $6k and sent all items and now my money is being stolen by PayPal and not given to me.

 

Please help advise me whats going on (do not tell me to contact support as their office is closed, I want a response from you on this forum about this issue) PayPal appeal denied - Reference ID: PP-009-222-809-103

 

I have submitted a complaint to auexecutiveescalations @ paypal . com and also lodging a complaint to Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA).

 

Next step from here will be legal action and filing a lawsuit for you illegal activities and the theft of millions of dollars from your customers recently - PayPal appears to be collapsing amidst this financial recession covid-19 and taking down everyone and peoples money. BEWARE!

Login to Me Too

Sierra307
Contributor
Contributor

Finally! Thank you paypal. It looks like as of today the hold on my account has been lifted! I have been able to process the transfer of funds to my bank. It took 36 days and many hours to find documentation, vendor invoices, receipts, itemized packing lists. It took me using my credit card and as I couldn't pay it back within the month, it took me incurring fees. It took me reaching out multiple times to paypal customer "service" and not getting much empathy or understanding of the difficulty I experienced as a small business owner. For businesses like Interior Design, where we are reselling items to clients with long lead times (often months) and we are expected to pay our vendors up-front to begin production and to ship items. Paypal is a dubious platform to use. The fact that they require proof of receipt of goods will lead me to avoid using them in future. I warn designers and people in a similar situation against using this form of payment. I'm disappointed because paypal is one of only 2 forms of payment that my online project management software recognized for integration and I would have loved to give my clients the functionality to approve proposals and pay for each one directly, but this process has given me pause - to say the least. I'm encouraged that finally my account is functional. I may try again with smaller dollar amounts. It would be nice to receive an acknowledgement from someone directly at Paypal saying they've read this and they understand the difficulty and that they would assure me it would never happen again. Good luck out there!

 

Login to Me Too

I dont know where else to go. I need my account restriction lifted. I have provided all the info I can and I cannot get a actual human person to respond to any of my messages. 

 

Reference ID: PP-L-218788105343

Login to Me Too

I have been trying to get my account fixed from 27th 2 days now and i still havent had a response from paypal i think all the humans have gone the customer service is closed and the auto bots do nothing
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.