Account Limitations: What You Need to Know

[PayPal_Mark]

Keeping your business and customers safer

To ensure PayPal remains a safer place for enabling payments, we regularly review all accounts. Sometimes, limitations may be placed on your PayPal account, which could restrict you from completing certain actions: such as withdrawing, spending, or receiving money. Limitations are in place to help protect all our customers, and in some cases to meet our regulatory obligations. Protecting your account and money is important to us.

Account Limitations: What might cause it, and how to help avoid it?

If your PayPal account is limited, you may be unable to withdraw, send or receive money. There are a number of reasons why your account could be limited:

Suspicious & unusual activity

• We suspect someone could be using your account without your knowledge.
• Your bank alerts us that someone has used your credit/debit card linked to your account without your permission.
• There are unexpected changes to your selling activities such as a sudden increase in your typical sales volume.

In such cases, we do what it takes to protect you from potential fraud prompted by the unusual activity– through limiting your account, and investigating.

You can safeguard your personal information and help protect yourself against fraud through some simple measures.  For example, don’t enter your personal or financial details when describing items for sale or in response to emails, and log out of sites you’ve entered your personal information into.

Regulatory reasons or business is not compliant

Your account could be limited for regulatory reasons. For example, India PayPal sellers need to include additional information to be able to accept payments in their account. Also, reaching a certain transaction value in your account may trigger a limit, which can also be removed by providing information required to PayPal.

There are also restrictions on what a PayPal account can be used to accept (and make) payments for. For example, PayPal doesn't allow the sale of counterfeit goods or banned items. So, ensure that your business is compliant with PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy .

Increased buyer issues

An increase of complaints, claims and chargebacks from buyers can lead to account limitations.

Following some simple guidelines can help you improve your performance and reduce the likelihood of limitations. Overall, communication is key. You should:

• Provide detailed product descriptions and photos.
• Be upfront about policies such as shipping and returns.
• Ship orders promptly and track shipments.
• Respond quickly to any messages from buyers.
• Work to amicably resolve any problems.
• Ship to the address provided in the transaction details page.
• Use quality shipping materials to prevent damage.

Removing limitations

 If your PayPal account is limited, here’s what happens:

1. We’ll email you to let you know –  we’ll ask you to log in to your PayPal account and go to the Resolution Centre for details on how to resolve the issue quickly, usually by providing information.
2. Once you’ve submitted the information required, we’ll review and reply via email.
3. We’ll remove the limitations once we have verified your account. At times, limitations can be removed by simply changing your security questions and password.

Here are the types of information and documents we may need from you:

- Supplier’s invoice with contact information

This helps us determine the inventory source and validate that you have the items that you’re selling in stock.

- Payment information

When an invoice is unavailable, we’ll review the following information about your payments:

• The item or service that was sold
• The buyer’s name and shipping address
• Proof of shipment to verify that an order was delivered

- Shipping or Tracking information

This helps us to verify that customer orders are being fulfilled.

- Proof of business
This provides evidence of a valid business registration and business ownership.

- Information for India sellers
This is to comply with our India regulatory obligations. Provide a valid PAN, a local bank account and the purpose code in your PayPal account task board.

- Proof of address such as bank statement or utility bill, Proof of identity such as passport or driver’s license
This helps us verify your identity when there is unusual account activity or to comply with regulations.

Once you’ve submitted your information, look out for any more emails from us as we may need additional details. We’ll do our best to confirm your information and remove the limitation within 2 business days, but sometimes it can take a little longer.

Quick Tip: If your PayPal account is limited, don’t open a new account. It could be traced back to the limited account.  It’s always best to resolve the limitation. We will guide you through it and restore full access to your PayPal account as quickly as possible.

[Mariyamabubakir]

my pay pal account failed verification i don't know why please help me to restore my account

[Temp20240214H]

Hi, my account recently got banned when I tried to updating my profile & address. Can you help me?

[donovanbrooke]

Horrible!

1.) When you go to submit info about transactions, if you are new to this, it's confusing because:

   a.) Total Amount does not actually reflect the exact total amount. It's a whole number without cents.  So, you feel like you've been hacked as it appears there are problems with transactions that don't actually exist.

   b.) The link to the transaction detail does not link to the detail. Bug, or not, you have to tediously learn how to copy/paste the transaction ID, and in my case, go to Zettle to search for the transaction. Then go back to the "submit info" in the form to explain the transaction.

I didn't catch this at first and simply replied to the questions as "This transaction does not exist".

    c.) There is no ability to *edit* your submissions once you've submitted your answers. I read PayPal will reply within 3 days... well, what if you make mistakes on the answers as I did?!!  Do you have to wait 3 days just to hear the answers are not satisfactory, or perhaps risk having more limitations or deactivation imposed!? So, if I *finally* submit the appropriate answers and prove that I am who I am (or whatever paypal needs), do I have to wait another 3 days or more!?

I run a mom/pop shop and worked really hard last night at my event only to not be able to access the funds from that event. What a horrible "service" for businesses. After 20 some years of use, I am very likely to move on from PayPal after this.

[DKK2024]

Our PayPal account has been closed for 180 days and they have 30.000 euro . We have increased sales volume but some claims . What to do we are too small company to solve this issue?

[Eyyuep]

Hello,

We recently had a conversation with customer service regarding the restriction that was placed on our account. However, despite approximately two weeks passing since that conversation, we have not received any information regarding the restriction. We are still waiting. Due to this restriction, we are unable to continue our sales, and our customers cannot renew the terms of their products. Our customers are negatively affected by this situation.

We believe that PayPal should assist us in this matter. We need to determine a roadmap on what steps to take. Could you help us with this?

Thank you in advance for your attention and support.

Best regards,

Eyyup Gulen

[Pugmorgan]

I didn’t get email asking for anything. Customer service should be able to over ride payment denied! They didn’t

[Molly_meow]

Is it possible to get connected to Paypal without calling the call center because it's really expensive for me to call SG number? My paypal suddenly got limited and I would really like to recover the account since it was an account from 2021 and also I linked payment with the account

Please help me 😞

[kathy_shattler]

What is considered evidence of valid business ownership if you are a sole proprietor and use your social security number as your tax identification? Can you still have a business account? I need to submit invoices, and I don't think you can with a personal account. I don't remember what I submitted originally to get my business account now. Is a letter of "doing business as" sufficient?

[Toby123451]

Is there a formal process to go through for having the account reopened?

I have all of the appropriate documentation to show that we're a bonafide business.

[123fg]

I have been dealing with paypal asking me for documents for 7 straight years. The same documents i submited 7 years ago. The link to sumbit is a dead link. Everytime you click it it just says thanks for submitting documents instead of actually going to a screen to let you upload them. Now they have locked my account out & are still asking for documents & the link still does not work. I have contacted them over 100 times with no fix in site. Paypal does not have anyone communicate with customers instantly. You have to send them a message & they will get back to you within 3 days in which you get 1 message at a time every 3 days solving nothing. How do i solve this problem when no one even cares at paypal to begin with all the while my online business is losing money???