Our PayPal account blocked by mistake

[MMarchenko]

Hello!

My name is Mikhail [removed], I'm the owner of FunPay, and I would really like to see at least someone from PayPal read this page from beginning to end.

And although we have been working for a very long time, we decided to use PayPal relatively recently, October 8, 2022, when we opened our company in the UAE. It is extremely important for us to use PayPal, because absolutely all of our competitors successfully use it:

• g2g
• overgear
• playerauctions
• all others

Realizing that PayPal is an unfamiliar means of payment for us, we made it available not to everyone, but only to a certain focus group of our users, which we began to expand over time. Everything was going extremely well and we fully connected PayPal not only for the control group, but for all users of our site, but then a disaster happened: on November 19, 2022, a scammer came to our site who is hacking into PayPal accounts. He did:

• 988 fraudulent payment attempts.
• Successfully passed 170 payments.

He received our services and products, and a day later, PayPal sent us information that, it turns out, all these payments were unauthorized, and the real owners of PayPal accounts are not aware of these payments.

We have a top-notch anti-fraud system (which includes both administrative staff and special algorithms), however, we were not ready for this turn of events: we initially thought that PayPal was a secure system, so all our own security systems have been disabled for PayPal payments.

We have already taken all the necessary measures at the moment, and this situation cannot happen again.

Apparently, the PayPal administration decided that we were somehow connected with this criminal, and decided to block our account without the possibility of unblocking. This is a short-sighted and unfair decision that affects thousands of people - our customers who will no longer be able to pay us.

I would like to emphasize a few points in particular:

1) It is not a problem for us at our expense to return the money for any disputes in PayPal. We are ready to bear any losses.

2) For us, any period of HOLD funds is not a problem, we are ready to expect money for 21 days or 180 days - we have large reserves and this does not matter to us.

3) We don't mind taking on PayPal losses that result from carders and other scammers. We understand that PayPal is an insecure and unreliable system, but we are ready to work with it anyway.

4) If necessary, we can deposit a security deposit of up to 500,000 USD to our PayPal account (just for the peace of mind of the PayPal administration).

5) All of our competitors (like g2g, playerauctions, and pretty much everyone else) use PayPal. Our sets of services are absolutely identical. If PayPal believes that certain services on our site do not comply with PayPal policies, then we may remove them.

PayPal is very important to us, because buyers trust PayPal and want to pay through PayPal, feeling secure. That's the only reason we need PayPal - it helps us grow our company. 

We posted a link to this topic from our website so that everyone who wants to pay us through PayPal can read this message and write a comment to our support.

Reference ID: PP-L-369344468249

[YasinC]

I wanted to buy something but can’t pay with PayPal

[MariLampa]

Please I wanna buy on funpay and I cannot please

[jorgeelm]

my only form of payment is by PayPal but

[DaDestroyer]

unban the account

[BFeely]

Please keep in mind most of the comments requesting unbamning of this merchant's account are from traffic directed from the site. PayPal will more than likely not post any public statement for privacy reasons, and more than likely will not take into consideration the flood of messages posted here. Sites like TrustPilot and MyWOT are getting flooded with positive reviews due to the astroturfing campaign run by OP. It is very possible the wave of disputes could be due to a crackdown by one or more game platforms on reselling and other TOS violations, resulting in a ban wave against customers and sellers on FunPay and other TOS violating platforms. While OP does bring up their competitors, some of which may not be subject to anti-Russia sanctions, said competitors might now be under investigation by PayPal for facilitating violations of the AUP.

[MMarchenko]

Bfeely, thanks for your comment.

"most of the comments requesting unbamning of this merchant's account are from traffic directed from the site"

Yes, that's how it is. I wrote about this in my very first message, I do not hide it in any way. In my opinion, this is absolutely correct and normal. They are PayPal users just like you and me.

"Sites like TrustPilot and MyWOT are getting flooded with positive reviews due to the astroturfing campaign run by OP."

This is not true. There are both positive and negative reviews. After each order, our service provides links to TrustPilot and MyWOT. This is absolutely normal and absolutely correct. Moreover, Trustpilot itself asks websites to collect feedback in this way.

"reselling and other TOS violations"

It is possible that some of the services that our site offers actually go against the TOS agreements of some games. However, it is absolutely legal, which was confirmed by the European Union court (I previously provided a link to the court decision, however, it was removed by the moderators of this forum. I can send it to you in a private message if you are interested.)

A lot of companies that use PayPal have a lot of different disputes (for example, patents disputes like Apple) and all this is not in the competence of PayPal.

"violations of the AUP"

There is no direct ban on our activities in PayPal AUP. All our competitors use PayPal absolutely freely and without any problems. If the AUP had such a ban, we would not even think of connecting PayPal on our website.

It would be nice if PayPal would clarify its position and list this activity as prohibited in its AUP, but so far this has not been the case, so the position of PayPal remains unclear to us.

[BFeely]

In reply to OP, please remember PayPal is a US-based entity, and so are many of the game platforms.  In addition, all indications show that you are in Russia, which is not on good terms in any way with the EU.  It also appears that nothing in this ruling means that service providers have to honor a transfer of accounts or in-game currency, in which case players caught selling such items can still risk their accounts being banned.  It appears said ruling is still under appeal, and does not apply to customers in the USA or the sanctioned country Russia.  Whether or not competitors are banned is not at all relevant to your case.

[Shrils]

Funpay is a wonderful website, I have used their services for the past 2-3 years without any problems. The addition of PayPal as a payment method will be unbelievably helpful and make it much more popular in the North America, currently we can only deposit with crypto, as other card providers are declined with VISA from North America

[EmadT]

I have bought several accounts from Funpay.ru and have not encountered any problems or been scammed, and I would really like to see the Paypal payment service in Funpay.

[KingDaru]

hi i am glade this site is still up. 😃