If you link your bank account to your PayPal account, then PayPal will always default to using that bank account, even if you also have PayPal linked to a credit card as well. To use the credit card, you have to change from the default bank to the credit card by manual action on each and every transaction. Sometimes this does not actually "take," despite checking the credit card, and your bank can be charged for your transaction while you were expecting it to be on your credit card. To make it worse, if you then try to remove the bank linked to your account by unlinking it, PayPal tells you that you have transaction(s) pending at the bank and will not let you. This happens even if the transactions all appear as paid by your bank and deducted from your account. Do not link your bank account to PayPal if you will usually use a credit card. Based on comments here, this problem has gone on for at least six years. The only explanation I can think of is that if PayPal avoids credit card use in favor of using the bank account at every opportunity, PayPal saves credit card fees. This increases financial return to PayPal, but can cause the user problems with bank overdraft fees if he believes his transaction was conducted upon his credit card. PayPal should allow credit card to be chosen as the default vehicle on accounts that also have a linked bank account.
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