American living abroad in Japan... Using PayPal USA account to send money to someone in the USA.

[solrunner]

Hello PayPal,

I'm an American photographer temporarily living  in Japan. I'm trying to send money to someone in the USA (my retoucher) using my USA PayPal account which has my USA credit card MasterCard(and my USA billing address). Last month I could send money successfully from Japan, however now its saying that I don't have enough money in my PayPal account.  I checked and..

A) My master card is okay, no problems.

B) I had thought since I'm using my credit card to send payments there was no need to keep a PayPal balance?

Since I'm sending money from Japan(using an IP address in Japan of course) would the system block the sending of money to the USA using a USA credit card? (My address in my USA PayPal account is naturally my USA address).

How come it worked the first time and not now? Any suggestions?

Thank you for your help!

[surplusdealdude]

See if your retoucher can send you a Paypal invoice and pay him that way.

What you're trying to do is essentially do a cash advance with Paypal and they may have changed the system to prevent that.

There might also be an issue that they want all USA accounts to be verified through their bank accounts - this is a Homeland Security initiative designed to prevent funding of terrorists and money laundering.

To someone that has a paranoid mindset, you could be seen as someone trying to fund a terrorist - don't look at me, they're all a little crazy about this right now.