@radiogooroo It doesn't look like anyone really provided a meaningful response to this, so I figured I'd address it because I've experienced it before myself. My experience has been that when your payment activity deviates from its typical cadence- for instance, when you make a particularly large payment (usually in the thousands of dollars), and that isn't consistent with the normal month to month payments you may have been making historically, PayPal will place a hold on the funds. If you've reached out to PayPal by phone, I'm surprised nobody has explained it to you on one of those calls. They reserve the right to hold the funds until they're certain everything has fully posted and no chargeback occurs. There is a second circumstance under which I've experienced the same issue- when you make multiple payments that are close together, particularly if it is not a typical payment pattern, this can cause the same flag/hold response. It is most prevalent when the overall dollar amounts exceed a certain threshold. I've experienced both scenarios myself, and while I wasn't in the same situation as you (trying to make another purchase), it was still very frustrating as I was deliberately knocking out outstanding revolving credit debt across multiple accounts. Because it's part of their internal policy, I was not able to change anything about it by speaking with a representative by phone, and just had to wait for the dust to settle and the balance to reflect properly. Because I now know this, I tend to space my payments out, and I generally stay under $1000 in a pass, to (hopefully) avoid it happening again. With prime lenders like Amex, Capital One, Chase, as you likely know, this is never an issue. They process the payments overnight the same business day (assuming payments made within that business day), and both your bank accounts and the credit issuer's balances reflect those payments the very next morning- with a few exceptions, like Discover for instance (they will also do these holds). I dislike this about PayPal, not because I necessarily have an immediate need for access to the funds, but because it seems excessive. On the other hand, I tend to use the PayPal for the 0% interest periods, so I've just learned to live with it. I've never been able to find anything about this specifically in their terms and conditions, but came across your post as I'm doing the exact same thing right now (paying down a large balance). TL;DR- they can and will do this when payments are made close together, or when those payments exceed a certain dollar threshold. Because of this, I deliberately space out my payments and keep them moderate in dollar amount so it doesn't cause a flag/hold. If there is a silver lining- they are not allowed to charge interest against that balance while it's in a hold state, so at least you are covered on that.
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