Why does it take so long to transfer money from my bank account to PayPal?

[travelbyday]

It shouldn't take 3-5 business days. Who are you to keep my money and not let me use it when I need to?

I transferred money from a bank account to my PayPal account. The money is out of the bank, and PayPal is still "processing" it. I know you have it, PayPal, I'm not stupid. Technology is advanced enough that it would be able to process instantly.

Now I have no access to my money. And it takes BUSINESS days, so this weekend won't count.

This is dumb.

[tbearlfg]

A friend sent money to me via PayPal on the 22nd of October 2010. Her account was debited immediately. It is now the 30th of October and there is no evidence of the transaction in my Paypal account. This is totally and completely unacceptable in this day and age. I too will be looking for another way to transfer money. I have to think that Paypal is holding the money on account for a certain period of time in order to collect interest. That 'period of time' is probably a mandate of the bank they deal with or another Federal Regulations. This is crap!

[brionkerlin]

Paypal's stement connected with transfers from your bank to their account is.  "Allow 3-5 business days for the transfer to be completed"  Anyone knows that in these elecronic times, this is pure bullcrap.  You can be sure  Paypal is diverting your transfer for a short while in order to make money off of your money.  As a Paypal merchant, I already pay the plenty, thank you.  This ought to result in a class action suit against Paypal.  Brion Kerlin

[Mare-Sings]

You may have a point regarding the class action suit. Because PayPal is holding our money hostage to make the interest from it, and the person who said, "that's just business, can't blame them for wanting to make money" is flat wrong.  By tying up our funds for 3-5 business days in this age of intantaneous electronic transfer of funds, they are essentially stealing money from their customers, a very poor way to do business.  I will be looking for an alternative way to make payments for online purchases. I ordered quite a few items that I wanted to arrive before Christmas, only to find that PayPal had somehow dropped the credit card which had been attached to my account, thus putting me in the position of having to wait for that clearance, even though the funds have been transferred from my account. In one case, the vendor I was purchasing from is going on vacation, and if my funds are not cleared by PayPal by Dec. 19, which they will not be, they will not be shipping the item until Jan. 9th, which makes my Christmas gift almost redundant. And I am stuck with this?  Is there any alternative? I realized after the fact that I could have my funds released immediately if I added a credit card to the account (there used to be one associated with this account) almost by accident, rather than anything PayPal did to advise me of this loophole.  Shoddy. And if they can release the funds immediately if you add your credit card, doesn't that kind of negate the excuse of the employee that there is some sort of unwieldy federal reserve process which is causing our monies to be withheld. Not buying it, Pay Pal. 

[fromgrandma]

I will be on the lookout for a class action lawsuit to join!!!!!!! Count me in!!!!!!

[marcy5150]

Pay pal, you better pay attention. A company will come along and process the funds request faster and get a lot of your business. This is not right for you to hold on to our money. Funny how I request the money thru you and the bank processes it the same day. This is way too long to wait for money. I could see 24 hours. Not a week. This is not the 70's.

[Mare-Sings]

AMEN, this about sums it up. It is NOT the 70's!  Paypal's withholding of my funds has lost them any further business of mine.

[FullGallopNYC]

AMEN! Stop using PP!  If you have clothes or accessories check out Buffalo Exchange, they are springing up eveywhere and they pay CASH on the spot for anything they buy

[starionx]

The reply that paypal helmute gave is nothing but a joke. As someone who works in a bank, I can tell you that the most that it would take to transfer from one australian bank to another, would be 2 business days (if the transfer was done at night). If it was done during the day, it would take one business day. As everyone suspects, Paypal are holding on to the funds and making money out of it. It's as simple as that.

I was actually wanting to buy something on special from a website, but they only accept Paypal. Considering how long it will take to transfer the funds... no thanks.

[PinetreeChalet]

We have rental house in Whistler - if someone pays by credit card it already costs a hefty sum to process the payment.  I just had a customer pay by PayPal and I tranferred the money to my bank account... This is June 17th and I got a message stating it would be 5-7 business days - should be in my account by June 28th!!  You're kidding?  That's nearly 2 weeks away!

I replied to the email with my protest but got an 'auto-reply' that the email account couldn't accept any emails.  I was to logon, go to Contact, the Contact Customer Service - well, that doesn't exist... at least I couldn't find it in the 5 minutes of looking for it.  I finally chose a mildly related subject line that allowed me to at least send something.  I got the following reply:

 My name is Mary Ann from PayPal Consumer Support.

Your funds will be available on your bank account not later than June
29, 2011 due to  the Federal Reserve Bank's ACH transfer process.
Transferring your funds from PayPal system to your bank account  takes
6-8 business days to complete.

If you have further questions you can contact us at Login, Click "Contact Us", Click "Customer Service Center" and
we'll be more than happy to assist you.

Thanks for choosing PayPal.
Sincerely,
Mary Ann
Consumer Support
PayPal, an eBay Company

Well, now we've gone from 5-7 days to 6-8 days.  This is going backwards.  An e-check is instant (used on the weekend).  In this day & age of "instant-everything" I cannot believe that I have to wait that long for MY money to be usable.  I will be discouraging the use of PayPal whenever possible now.  Hopefully the numbers of dissatisfied people taking their business elsewhere and loss of credit card processing revenue will encourage PayPal to rethink their business practices.

[mlynn1231]

LAUNCH A COMPLAINT WITH THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION (FTC). I had a problem once with my bank and I learned about The Controller of Currency, who eventually got them  to refund me $400 in fees. Otherwise, I was out $400 bucks to a big bank. This is the world we live in, folks. It's scary how few people know about how to protect themselves.  I went to the C of C about paypal but because Pay Pal isn't a bank, they are not regulated by the same entity. So they referred me to the Federal Trade Commission. I got a letter back from them saying their standard procedure is to investigate, including taking note of any pattern of complaints against them, then decide from there how to proceed.. So please, stop complaining here and go to the Federal Trade Commission website. You may get referred to another agency, but you will be helping to ensure consumers are protected. What will doing nothing do for you?

This is all part of that ruse of "big government". The same people who shriek about "big governemnt" were shockingly quiet when it came to the Patriot Act. That's about as big as government gets. No. The big government ruse is a product of corporate think tanks that devise ways of helping corporations act as they please with no consequence.. I don't care who you vote for. But do you see what corporations will do when they're allowed to get away with it? All these unwitting people falling for this hoax. Keep yourself protected. Wtihout oversight, we're **bleep**ed.