It is frustrating. When you make a payment with PayPal that is funded by your bank account, the payment is sent immediately and a bank transaction is generated. Once the bank transaction is initiiated, there is no way to stop that process until it plays out, which can take 3-4 banking business days. This is a result of the banking process that has been in place for years (before PayPal even existed). It is a bit complex, but here is how it works. When you send a PayPal payment from your account and your bank is the funding source (i.e. you do not have enough cash in your PayPal account, so PayPal hits your bank account), the recipient of your payment gets the funds immediately. However, PayPal gets the cash from your bank using the Automated Clearing House process set up by the banks. ACH works like this: Overnight, PayPal sends a batch transaction records through a clearing house to each bank requesting the funds. Those transactions are received by your bank the next day. Over the next night, your bank posts those transactions. If you have enough cash in the bank nothing more happens from your perspective. From PayPal's perspective. a bulk transaction of all of the cash received in that batch (your cash and any others sent through that same batch) is sent to PayPal, (another full day of transmission time). If your bank bounces the transaction, because you do not have enough cash, PayPal sends a notification (as part of another batch) back through the ACH system, which is another overnight delay. Finally on the third day, PayPal gets all of this batch information and , if there is not a rejection for your transaction, credits the cash to your account. If there is a rejection, PAyPal hits your backup funding source (the credit card you have on file) for the cash. Because of the ACH process, PayPal indeed does not have your cash until the whole thing settles out. You can watch this whole process yourself when you do an Add Funds for you bank account to your PayPal account. Try adding $10 to your account and then keep checking your bank account for the $10 to clear. You will see it hit your bank account a day or two before it is completed at the PayPal end. It's lame, but that is how the bank process works. Hope this helps.
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