"The country you're trying to send money to can't receive this payment."

[PolishToaster]

More fuel to the fire, I have for the past month been getting the following error when attempting to send money to another country. I reside in Canada and the recipient resides in the USA.
I have tried the following solutions to no effect:

• I have tried clearing all cached data and logged in to a different browser to re-attempt the transaction.
• I have tried changing my primary currency to USD to complete the transaction.
• I have tried transferring funds from my bank account directly into my wallet and using those funds to pay for the transaction.
• I have tried having the recipient send me a money request and I complete the transaction through the request.

I either get the "The country you're trying to send money to can't receive this payment." OR I will get a "The current user is not available to receive payments at the moment." when I attempt to complete the transaction on mobile. This has been happening for the past month, and most of the solutions that have been suggested on the forums or on other websites have not worked.

A concrete solution of some kind would be wonderful. 🙂

[kernowlass]

@PolishToaster 

Sounds as if it may be an issue on the recipients paypal account?

Have they received funds before and is there paypal account verified?

Are they using a VPN? If so then turn it off and try again.

If you are using funds in your balance make sure they are in the correct currency and then ...

Click on the profile tab (icon next to log out) > Click on payments third option along on the thick blue band top of page > second down click on update next to your preferred way to pay and put a dot in one of the options listed.

[PolishToaster]

Thank you for the reply. I contacted PayPal Support and they were looking into the issue over the course of a few days. To answer your questions:

• The recipient confirmed with PayPal support that there were currently no issues with their account
• They have received funds before without issues on this account (fully verified with email and bank card)
• I was not using a VPN when attempting to process the transaction
• When I attempted to add money to my PayPal wallet I did try to select a different preferred way to pay

Sadly this transaction was not able to be completed, here is a summary of what was discussed with PayPal support:

• PayPal support determined that there was a security lockout on this transaction. Was never given a concrete answer but it could have been due to attempting to process the transaction while on mobile data and PayPal flagged the transaction as suspicious. This could also occur due to " higher amounts than usual, use of different payment instrument, change of location, change of profile ( name, address, etc) or even a different network ( public wifi or new IP)".
• PayPal support suggested I try to process the transaction as a "Goods and services" transaction rather than a "Friends and Family" transaction with no success.
• PayPal support suggested I wait 72 hours as that would refresh the security status on my account and the transaction would be able to process. After waiting 96 hours the transaction would still not process.
• I had attempted to send funds to a different friend in the USA and this transaction processed without any issues. This transaction was processed on my local WiFi at home.
• Finally support suggested that if the transaction was time sensitive I could look into using other services and the chat was closed.

So along with the solutions suggested by @kernowlass and the ones listed above it could potentially be an account issue. The easiest way I found to get into contact with PayPal support was by going through their chat bot and requesting an agent there.

[kernowlass]

@PolishToaster 

I didn't ask if you were using a VPN or had received funds before, I asked if the recipient had received before and if they were using a VPN?

[PolishToaster · Accepted solution]

My apologies, totally misread that.
No, the recipient was not using a VPN and they had received funds before on their account.

Turns out they hadn't received international funds before. They found that in their business management settings there was an option to block payments from non-US PayPal accounts:

Setting that prevented the user from receiving payments from non US accounts

This setting was found under https://www.paypal.com/businessmanage/preferences/payments 
After disabling this setting the recipient was able to receive funds from my account without issue.

Thank you for attempting to troubleshoot, problem has been solved now! Sorry for the hassle.