Paypal can withdraw money from your bank account? That’d mean it’s Paypal’s account!
PayPal won’t/can’t withdraw money from your bank account on their own. They also won’t deposit money into your bank account on their own either (I’ve forgotten this and wondered why a PayPal payment hadn’t shown up in my bank account, I’d forgotten to do the transfer manually).
They can only deal with your ‘PayPal’ account, and *you *are the only one who can add/withdraw money from your actual bank (or credit/debit card) into & out of your PayPal account. Like I said if you’re going to use them I highly, ***highly ***recommend getting their hardware security key. It adds a layer of protection that is almost impossible to hack (unless you write your name/email on it and physically lose it!)
This has always been my understanding too (but based on zero evidence). If they could access your bank account directly that’d be a big issue.
You can have two Paypal accounts, a personal account and a business (or premier) account. I do all my buying through my personal account. It is linked to a couple credit cards, but no bank account. This way I don’t have to constantly reset the source of funds (as stated Paypal wants to withdraw money from a bank account).
I receive money via my other account, which I then transfer to my bank account.
As previously stated you should always do purchases from a credit card source–so you will have more protection if something goes wrong.
Paypal is not the defacto method for online payments. Except for eBay transactions, credit cards are the defacto method.
They withdraw it form your account by reversing the transaction. It’s never happened to me but something similar happened once.
I took a check for some private business I transacted and it got disputed 14 months AFTER it cleared and the bank reversed the check as NSF and took the money out of my account and charged me a fees.
There is supposed to be a time frame for a charge back but it’s not always “firm” so to speak. So it’s possible to have PayPal clear your fund for payment and then a long while later, have the transaction reversed, resulting what looks like PP taking money out of your account.
If you are going to use PP in any big way, rather than for a transaction a few times a year, at low amounts, it just makes sense to get a separate account for it. There are a lot of banks that allow free checking with small or no balances.
I’ve always thought that the basis/business plan of ebay/PayPal was simply to provide a tool for small ebay vendors, who would not be able to do so otherwise, to accept credi card transactions. I doubt most ebay vendors, at least at the time of ebay’s inception, would not have been able to qualify for a Merchant Account with a financial institution. Without ebay/PayPal providing access to some form of on-line payment, I doubt ebay would have become what it is today.
This has been my experience, too. Using PP for about 10 years, they’ve never withdrawn or deposited money to my linked bank account - only when I initiate that.
As already mentioned upthread, their fees can be aggravating. Many users (my payers) have difficulty choosing the correct payment options that result in no fee taken.
One gripe I have is when making some online purchases, the vendor’s only payment option is PayPal, and then I cannot pay with my credit card. I am forced to use my PP balance. If I want to pay with CC, I don’t see any way through the UI to change that. Annoying.
Sorry, not true. Several sites have PP as the only payment option.
Can’t you log out of PP and pay using CC like you don’t have a PP account?
Well yeah, but what I meant was in terms of internet specific payment systems, PayPal is not only the most popular it’s essentially the **only **one. Credit cards obviously existed long before the internet and they just adapted to it (rather easily). But there were a lot of early attempts to create an ‘internet currency’ all of which failed (Flooz, Beenz etc.)
Also, PayPal is very often listed right along with Visa, MasterCard etc. in online merchants’ lists (not just eBay) of accepted payment methods.
You will probably never have problems with them, but I would suggest you don’t leave much money in a PayPal account (the definition of “much” is up to you.) There are plenty of stories of PayPal freezing people’s accounts. Have PayPal send you a check as soon as you have much money in there.
I would also suggest you don’t give them a bank account that you really use or have much money in. They are not a bank and do not abide by the rules of banks. As others have mentioned, if you do link your PayPal to a bank account and then pay someone by PayPal, be aware that PayPal will by default try to withdraw the money from your bank account rather than your credit card. That could lead to overdrafts. And you can’t change that default behavior, you have to select credit card each time you make a payment by PayPal.
Correct: From the PP website
I had to check the date on the OP. I thought it might be a zombie. Paypal is established as THE payment service on the net for person to person transactions. It is safe and reliable.
Yeah, it just has a tendency to collect fees from donations for needy kids, them freeze the donations, then force them to return the donations.
http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/05/cats-1-kids-0/
My experience is that if you have a free or basic account paypal can freeze it at any time, can freeze it because you bought from a vendor that is hinky, or for basically any capricious reason. It happened to me and it sucked. There is no easily found phone number to call, customer service is TERRIBLE and email support horrible.
Then I started moving into online businesses and ebay and needed to use paypal, I got a confirmed and business account.
EVERYTHING CHANGED!
I’ve never had my account frozen since, even though frankly I’m sure I look bizarre from their end as I have customers worldwide paying in and I access the account from non-USA IPs and use foreign ATMs usually as I’m not in the USA, they have never complained. I have a customer service number displayed on my account when I log in, they have bent over backwards to help me with problems. When I have had an issue with scamming customers sending a clear detail of my side along with delivery confirmation numbers usually solves it easily.
If you move anything more than $100 USD through the account you will likely run into problems sad to say, get confirmed and get a business grade account, it will change your fee structure but trust me it is worth it!