Delays in paypal bill pay transactions, who can help?

dcatast
Contributor
Contributor

Payments I've made using bill pay have been sent to my billers (American express, utility bills, insurance) in 1-2 days. These show as ACH transactions when received by my billers.

 

However, in the past month, on more than one occasion paypal delayed paying my bills.

payments made on Nov 28th 2022 (17 days to send)

payments made on Nov 29th 2022 (7 days to send)

payments made on Nov 30th 2022 (6 days to send)

 

this has now occurred again. a payment sent Dec 14th has not been sent - i know this because a separate payment sent on Dec 15th has already arrived at my biller.

 

This service is unreliable.

 

But worse is that paypal reps are unable to provide ACH trace numbers and insist that since paypal took the money from my bank that the transaction was completed. They advise to contact who runs the paypal account at american express. These are not paypal to paypal transactions. Paypal relays the money to the bill pay target via ACH, not to their paypal account.

 

Has anyone had success in getting help with a transaction like this?

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173 REPLIES 173

mattV123
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I use PayPal bill pay to pay my Chase credit card bill. The payment I sent on 1/4 still hasn’t hit my Chase account. I’m convinced it’s delays from the holidays and I’m fighting the temptation to try to figure out what’s taking so long.
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dcatast
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if you think it's a delay from the holiday, sorry to break it to you.

 

paypal uses a company called paymentus to process their payments.  when you contact paypal - paypal says the transaction was completed because on paypal's side they see that they paid paymentus. from paypal's perspective it is complete. the reps don't know anything about bill pay and dismiss you as stupid for complaining about your money not hitting your biller. if you read the other threads on this board - you see the type of people they're dealing with, and they lump you in with them.

 

paymentus is a large processor that handles bill pay functions for many companies. from what i can gather, they submit a file with the day's ACH's in it. if for whatever reason that file has errors in it, the file is rejected. what i'm thinking is that there is no feedback loop to see if the file was accepted or rejected. (no idea why the file would be rejected). so if the file is rejected, those payments don't go through until someone recognizes it, finds the error, corrects it.

 

anyway, 1/4 payments were in status accepted and submitted yesterday on 1/10, just like 12/27... the fact they did not post like the 12/27 payments tells me the 1/4 file was rejected again and it will need to be corrected and resubmitted.

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zenode
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I have this issue for a 1/4 mortgage payment that’s due on 1/15, so squeaky bum time. I saw this thread and contacted PayPal yesterday just to push and see if my payment needed to be added to a ticket or something to expedite it. Agent immediately gave me the Xoom support number and told me to contact them. What’s the relationship between Xoom and Paymentus? Is there any merit to contacting Xoom or a specific request to make of them?
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joshdavis
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I am so sick and tired of PayPal and all their junk. All they do is lie to us. My payments from 1/4 still have not hit. This is beyond ridiculous. I have never seen a more incompetent company with incompetent support who blames us for the trouble. My goodness PayPal is a joke. 

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joshdavis
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Additionally, a payment I made yesterday night has already been credited to the same account. How is this even possible that a payment from a week and a half ago hasn't credited, but one from yesterday does

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Anonymous_User
Not applicable

@dcatast Do you know if they use paymentus for all bill pays?  The reason I ask is because I see paymentus email listed as the contact for only some of my billers.

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Anonymous_User
Not applicable

@joshdavis Different day, different ACH file.  Yesterday's ACH file must have been free of mistakes hence it processed correctly.

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dcatast
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I don't think paymentus handles all payments. But I have no way of knowing.

 

in your history you may see that you have "bill pay" and "automatic payment" on different bills. I think they handle bill pay and automatic payment is handled by someone else.  When i pay american express, it's an automatic payment.  i've never had a delay for automatic payments, even for payments sent on 12/7 and other "ether" days.

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Buckets1
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Thanks a bunch dcatast and everyone who helped figure this out. I’m still waiting on a Jan 4 bill pay to Chase but feel better about it posting soon since the Dec 27 ones went thru. Hate it for the people trying to meet payment deadlines.
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sea3pea0
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Contributor

@dcatast Thanks for all your updates and legwork on these issues. It's been extremely helpful and without a doubt has saved many of us quite a bit of time! Would you happen to have the contact info for PaymentUS? Have you contacted them again about the 1/4 payments already? Thanks again

 

Edit: Nevermind, found the number to Paymentus, if anyone needs it just search for "paymentus" to find their site and look for customer support. This forum doesn't allow phone numbers to be posted

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