Customer Unable to Pay Money Request

[Trisha909]

A very strange thing has happened to me twice now. The other day I sent a money request to a customer and they were unable to make the payment. They repeatedly received an error which stated: 'Sorry, this recipient can't accept personal payments. If you continue to encounter problems, please contact customer service.'

I have been requesting money from customers this way since I have had a Paypal account - which is more years than I care to remember. And this has now suddenly happened. I spoke to Paypal and they could not shed any light on the problem and I put it down to a glitch.

However, this has happened again this evening, when requesting payment from a customer.

Has anyone else encountered this? It seems very odd to me that this has suddenly started happening.

Curiously, between these two incidents I have received money from other customers by sending the usual requests - so it seems to be happening intermittently.

It's late here, and I'm going to switch off now, but will check to see if anyone can shed any light on this problem tomorrow.

Trisha

[sharpiemarker]

@Trisha909

Instruct the buyer to select "Paying for item or service" under the amount field during the payment process. Some PayPal accounts depending on country/region might not support personal payments only commercial ones. Perhaps send them a PayPal invoice instead.

[Trisha909]

Hmmmmm....but this was via my business account and sent in the way that I have been sending payment requests for years - i.e. via the link at the top: Money-Send or Request Money-Request from Customers - and then enter the email and amount. And I've done exactly this between these two failed requests over the past couple of weeks and it's worked fine.

It's very odd that this problem has only occurred with two requests (thus far).

Still completely baffled. I'll try going via the link 'create an invoice' instead - but just why? I've never had to do it this way before? And will that work, or will it just throw up the same error message?

[Trisha909]

I've just spoken with Paypal customer services and they assure me there is nothing amiss with my Paypal account.

Apparently, when making payment to a payment request, the customer has a choice to pay as a personal payment (I am guessing 'friends & family') or as a normal payment?

This must be a new option, because this has only just started happening in the past two weeks, after about 10 years with Paypal.

Does anyone know, from a customer's point of view, if there is now a choice as to how to make payment when a payment request is received?

I can only think the payment interface must have changed in the past couple of weeks, as I've now encountered this problem twice.

[Trisha909]

I've just received an image of the choice given to the recipient of a money request by the very helpful Paypal rep that I spoke to. Yes, there is indeed a choice between 'friends and family' or 'goods or service'. I attach the image just to help anyone else that encounters this problem.
I can only think this must be new, as I just cannot believe that after 10 years with Paypal this problem has only just occurred.