Does payouts require funds?

[alonsn]

In order to make payouts from a business account and given a bank linked to that account, do we must to have funds? Or will money be withdrawn from the linked account automatically?

[pgpal20]

We had this problem this week -- our webapp is supposed to pay recipients via the REST API using venmo (mobile) , and we had both a linked bank account AND backup primary card, but no one could get paid; the error code returned was: 

{"name":"INSUFFICIENT_FUNDS","message":"Sender does not have sufficient funds. Please add funds and retry.","debug_id":"redacted","information_link":"https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/payments.payouts-batch/#errors","links":[]}

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/payments.payouts-batch/v1/#error-INSUFFICIENT_FUNDS

So, evidently, you need to have a "Paypal balance" all the time for your webapp to make payments. 

So, we initiated a transfer from the bank account which will take up to 5 days, meanwhile users are waiting to get paid. ouch

This was never made clear in any documentation we could find... the payout service does NOT pull from a bank account in real time. 

[MTS_Chiranjeevi]

Hi @alonsn,

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Unfortunately, you can't process payouts with linked bank accounts / cards.

Yes, you should have sufficient PayPal balance in your business PayPal account to process payouts. 

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Sincerely,

Chiranjeevi