The Easiest 4 Steps To Get Your PayPal Account Frozen
1. Be a bootstrapping startup.
With no funding, transactions or big names behind us, we set up our PayPal merchant account like any innocent first-time founders would: by following procedure.
We wanted to use PayPal Pro to streamline our transactions.
2. Apply for Payments Pro.
I call PayPal back and tell them that we in no way fall under the state’s definition of a Seller of Travel and therefore not only don’t need the license, but wouldn’t qualify for it.
I am told by three different representatives. (I’m always a believer in calling back to talk to someone else if the first person doesn’t give you the answer you want). In this case, no one was giving us the answer we wanted. Time to pivot.
3. Comply with PayPal’s requests.
Ten days later, our account status has not changed and I still cannot get any more information from PayPal customer support.
4. Stay Loyal.
Seamless and perfect? Far from it. Functional and secure? Yes. Less than 12 hours after getting the service us and running, I receive the following email from PayPal:
Dear Auction Essistance,
Thank you for your response.
Per our Acceptable Use Policy, under credit card association rules, PayPal
cannot permit the use of the PayPal service as a funding method for payment
processors to collect payments on behalf of merchants. Upon review of
your account, it appears that you are offering an aggregation service that
allows multiple merchants to process transactions that are against various
Acceptable Use rules. The service you provide allows said merchants to
circumvent our policies.
While we wish you the best of success in your future business endeavors, we
respectfully ask that you seek another method of payment for your online
business.
Your PayPal Account has been limited and there will be no appeals to the
decision. Any remaining funds in your account balance will be held for 180
days from the date of the limitation. Once 180 days has passed, the funds
will be available for withdrawal.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.
Sincerely,
Julie
PayPal Compliance Department
PayPal, an eBay Company
Responses to this email address are not monitored. Please send any
additional questions that you may have to compliance@paypal.com.
Translation: Your account has been frozen and there’s nothing you can do about it.Upon referring to PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy, as they instructed, I find nothing to suggest we are not in compliance.
In fact, we seem to be the exact kind of merchant PayPal would want using its services.
We are bringing them new users by requiring our customers to pay with PayPal, we are building a global marketplace that is ideal case study for PayPal’s robust risk management and fraud management and we’re a budding new startup that enables a brand new community of merchants and transactions, off of which PayPal will be able to profit.
We’re still unclear why PayPal froze our account, but we’ve got a pretty good idea of how it happened, which really started with following procedure, followed by compliance, followed by loyalty to their service.
PayPal doesn’t want their cut of tens of millions of dollars of revenue we project in the next two years. Any idea of who does?