How do I block money requests

[Carly-dunn1]

Hi I've got someone constantly asking for money via PayPal money request. How do I go about blocking this person from doing this please? Also how do I block from sending money to them and remove them from my personal PayPal account please?

[Rollierojas]

Go to pay- contacts- hit the 3 dots and click block.

[ppazos]

That is not a solution to the issue, anyone can still request a payment. The solution should be to allow to explicitly hide the request payment button, which is not available right now. Blocking people just allow you to avoid getting more requests from the same people, not to disable the rest to request payment.

[angelaaag]

hi on your paypal homepage, scroll down to see Recent Activity and click on the request of that person. It will lead you to their profile, you can decline or send the payment request (note: if you decline, the person who requested will be sent an email that you declined it). As what I did before, there is a block and report option below. Blocking them allows you both to not see each other's profile or pay/send payment requests again 🙂

Recent Activity > Click on the payment request > Scroll down on their profile > Block 

**Note this person is not in my contacts. I gave them my paypal but turns out they were a scammer asking for money in return 😕 

[ppazos]

Read the previous 2 messages. This is not a solution to the reported issue.

[melancholyfleur]

I cannot even block the person (a stranger in my case, too) requesting money from me, it gives me an error. I assume it's because they are not in my contacts.

I have also tried adding them as a customer to invoice, but they don't show up as a contact.

[Philomorph]

What do you mean by "scroll down on their profile"?  Clicking the request simply shows the request and their name/email address. The only options are "Send payment" and "Cancel".

[ColiniloC]

While this is not a way to block anonymous requests themselves (which there really should be @Paypal!) you can turn off being notified of the request in the "Notifications" area. That way the only time you'll see the requests is when you login to your account, but they won't fill up your email / SMS.

[lasdfa]

Seriously, this has been open for years and there's still no fix for it? Closing the account seems to be the only feasible solution. 

I got a request from an unknown person today saying he was a student and essentially using paypal as a way to crowdfund tuition. Even if the story is true, which I doubt, why is this even allowed in the first place?

This person's not in my contacts. I closed the request, and paypal automatically emailed the scammer and let them know my email address and paypal account are active. There's no button on the request or on his profile to block him. There's no button to report the request. There's no way to add him to contacts to block him.

The only way so far I've seen to block this person seems to be in the paypal app, that does nothing to stop other accounts from sending me requests. I'm also not downloading the paypal app just to partially solve this issue. This is the first time I've even logged into paypal in almost a year and I'm not sure what the point of keeping the account open is.  I looked for a way to lock the account until it maybe becomes useful again, but no. I can't even unlink my bank account even though I have no automatic payments allowed.

So yeah, I use stripe and squarespace to process payments, & apple pay cash to send money to friends and family. Bye paypal.

[JonOxford]

Good grief. I've had a PayPal account for 20 years and only recently have I started receiving random requests for payments from scammers. I'm getting one or two a week now. I've just spent 20 minutes on the phone to someone at PayPal who seemed completely mystified that I wanted to be able to block payment requests from _anyone_. If I want to pay someone, I want to initiate it!

I was horrified to discover that when I clicked on "Cancel transaction" on the PayPal site they happily informed me that the person who had initiated the payment request would be emailed to let them know what I had done.

Is closing my PayPal account really the only solution to this problem? It would be a pain but I don't want to run the risk of one day responding to one of these phishing messages. At the moment they are obvious, but if they are allowed to continue then I'd imagine that they will improve and I'll start getting payment requests from people whose names I recognise and for smaller amounts.

[SeerUK]

Also found this post looking for a way to just turn off money requests, or only allow money requests specifically from contacts. I am a tech savvy person, but I'm still quite nervous about accidentally clicking on the "send this person £1000 that they're trying to scam from you" button which is right next to the cancel button.

I shouldn't receive these requests in the first place. It shouldn't be possible for strangers to request money from me. And if I did have the option enabled, there should be the option to report abuse of the system, block the person, and it should be made significantly clearer whether or not you have actually cancelled the request and that payment is not being taken!

I'm also contemplating closing my PayPal account that's 12 years old over this, because I don't want to have to deal with losing money, or the threat of it. It's unacceptable from PayPal.