Limitations are implemented to help protect PayPal, buyers and sellers when we notice restricted activities, an increased financial risk, or activity that appears to us as unusual or suspicious. Limitations also help us collect information necessary for keeping your PayPal account open.
There are several reasons why your PayPal account could be limited, including:
- If we suspect someone could be using your PayPal account without your knowledge, we’ll limit it for your protection and look into the fraudulent activity.
- If your debit or credit card issuer alerts us that someone has used your card without your permission. Similarly, if your bank lets us know that there have been unauthorized transfers between your PayPal account and your bank account.
- In order to comply with applicable law.
- If we reasonably believe you have breached this agreement or violated the Acceptable Use Policy.
- Seller performance indicating your PayPal account is high risk. Examples include: indications of poor selling performance because you’ve received an unusually high number of claims and chargebacks, selling an entirely new or high-cost product type, or if your typical sales volume increases rapidly.
You will need to resolve any issues with your account before a limitation can be removed. Normally, this is done after you provide us with the information we request. However, if we reasonably believe a risk still exists after you have provided us that information, we may take action to protect PayPal, our users, a third party, or you from reversals, fees, fines, penalties, legal and/or regulatory risks and any other liability.
Reserves placed on business PayPal accounts
We may place a reserve on your business PayPal account at any time if we believe there may be a high level of risk associated with you, your business PayPal account, your business model, or your transactions. When we place a reserve on your business PayPal account, it means that all or some portion of the money in your business PayPal account is reserved as unavailable for withdrawal in order to protect against the risk of transactions made by you being reversed or invalidated or any other risk related to your business PayPal account or use of the PayPal services. We make decisions about whether to place a reserve based on a number of factors, including information available to us from both internal sources and from third parties.
PayPal considers a list of non-exclusive factors and whether and how these factors have changed over time, including:
- How long you have been in business.
- Whether your industry has a higher likelihood of chargebacks.
- Your payment processing history with PayPal and other providers.
- Your business and/or personal credit history.
- Your delivery time frames.
- Whether you have higher than average number of returns, chargebacks, claims or disputes.
There are two types of reserves that may be placed on your business PayPal account, and one or both may be applied at the same time:
- A Rolling reserve is a reserve where a percentage of each transaction you receive each day is held and then released later on a scheduled basis. For example, your reserve could be set at 10% and held for a 90-day rolling period – meaning 10% of the money you receive on day 1 is held and then released on day 91, 10% of the money you receive on day 2 is held until day 92, etc. Rolling reserves are the most common type of reserve.
- A Minimum reserve is a specific minimum amount of money that you’re required to keep available in the balance of your business PayPal account at all times. The minimum reserve is either taken as an upfront amount deposited all at once or is established on a rolling basis from percentages of sales until the minimum reserve is achieved, much like a rolling reserve.
If we place a reserve on funds in your account, the funds will be shown as "pending" and we’ll notify you of the terms of the reserve.
If we change the terms of the reserve due to a change in our risk assessment, we’ll notify you of the new terms.
