Balance Manager End of Life

[SiliconVMan]

I was notified today that my favorite PayPal feature is being discontinued first of next year. From PayPal: The Balance Manager feature used to automatically transfer funds from your bank account to your PayPal account is being discontinued. In order to use your PayPal Business Debit Mastercard® for purchases, please ensure you maintain a balance in your PayPal account or add a backup funding source...

I use Balance Manager to top up my PayPal Business Debit Mastercard is a nice feature, but I primarily use it to insure I carry a PayPal balance for online purchases. Now I'm told I have to remember to login and manually transfer funds from my bank account. That's more work for a busy person like myself. Which means I may have to think, do I have a balance before using my PayPal account online or will my credit card be used as a backup funding source which I prefer to avoid credit card interest payments. Which is why I use Balance Manager. PayPal could have communicated their reasons for discontinuing Balance Manager. Does anyone know why?

[hannah221]

I agree with you. I've been with PayPal longer then if like to admit. I pay almost everything with my PayPal. I don't have the time to add money to it. I take care of my husband who is blind and my sister who has dementia. Have you really thought about the people you are affecting without hardly any notice. Shame on you. I'm getting rid of PayPal also. I've been a good customer. But they don't care.

[SimonACousins]

Not sure if Paypal cares about customer feedback on this but I will no longer be using PayPal for daily purchases.  The automated Balance Manager was a fundamental reason why I used the card for every day things such as lunch or an afternoon coffee.  I will be using an alternative.  Paypal have let me and other customers down with this.  I am deeply frustrated at this bad decision.  I doubt Paypal will ever read this thread though.

[Smast]

I have same issue with this. I will not be using my paypal account near as often now.  I’m sure this is related to the amount of money they are charged in fees for transferring money for their customers.  Heck, I’d pay a buck for each balance transfer to my paypal account to know it was moving into my account automatically.   Someone else said it and was right.....it all comes down to dollars and their bottom line. No other reason makes any sense.

[Razoras]

They've had this feature hidden and hard to get through without a Google search ever since the website redesign, so I guess I'm not surprised by this.  But it's also really the only reason I've used PayPal.

[SiliconVMan]

Now that I've had time to think this through, I believe PayPal is doing this because of their newly improved relationship with card networks. They're expecting people to add their credit card as a backup funding source to replace their bank account. 

[thestiegler]

I don't use my PayPal card that much anymore since I have the Costco credit card, but this feature is fundamental to my use of the PayPal card.  Back when I used the card to pay for gas, I would get the card rejected because of a low balance, so I had to keep putting money into the account.  This feature was perfect for that.  I just can't wrap my head around their reasoning for doing this.

Does the new credit card work differently and allow "see-through" to the backup funding to allow it work as a credit card even with a low balance?  If so, maybe this is to try to move people like me off of the old Business Debit card.  If so, then I may as well just switch to the Quicksilver card (with the same universal 1.5% cash-back) and not have to worry about the hybrid debit/credit card issues my PayPal card has.

[TuacaTom]

Ditto on both the "Why is it going away?" and "It is why I use PayPal"

I will start using other services instead.

[char993]

I use paypal for this feature also and never received an email that it was ending. I had a payment rejected because of no money in account  and could not figure out why I didn't have my usual tansfer. 

I agree time to look for something else. I won't be using paypal as much anymore.

[ScotH]

Today I logged in to check that an extra transfer from my bank account had gone through.  When I checked the balance something didn't seem right.  Looking thru the transactions, I noticed the Balance Manager transaction that is supposed to have transferred money every 2 weeks was missing.

I checked my old e-mails, and no notice that this feature was going away at the end of the year.

[RustyNutsMGs]

The recurring bank transfer feature has been the key PayPal feature for me, too, and I also had several recurring payments through PayPal that I expected to be paid from those transfers.  Without it, I'm not sure I really need PayPal anymore - I may as well just pay with my CC and cut out the middle man.  
What were they thinking?