Why I Can't Use PayPal To Buy Your Product

While some people may have various business reasons for wanting multiple PayPal accounts linked to one bank account, I've run into this problem for another reason that I imagine is even more common: I'm married. My wife and I both have PayPal accounts. But guess what, PayPal? We have but one bank account. You know... a joint account... like I'm sure a vast majority of married people have. What a stupid rule.

There's a great book called 'Founders At Work' that tells Max Levchin's account of PayPal's early days. Apparently they stopped considering PayPal a payments company very early on. They moved on to being a fraud prevention company. In reality, they no longer have to do anything to promote growth or even sustainability in money moving through the system, so they can just ignore that part. Almost their entire focus is on preventing fraud. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying.

To bad I can't offer stripe as an Australian company. We have one local bank that will let you accept multiple currency through a merchant account and they have some pretty major costs.<p>Until my startup gets a decent userbase I don't see an alternative to PayPal.

I've hit this 'can only link bank account to one PayPal account' problem a few times and it is very frustrating.<p>The way I operate my business and personal bank and PayPal accounts means I have to shuffle money around to work with this rule. Why, PayPal?

I've worked around this in the past by changing my e-mail address in my current paypal account, and then just creating a new account. (and then deleting my previous, now useless account). The limit is large enough that I so far have only needed to do this once. (I don't trust paypal enough to link it to an actual bank account).

Want to experience real pain? PayPal + eBay. Talk about some horror stories.<p>Here's what's interesting: It's YOUR MONEY. This isn't a credit card. It's a payment system that allows you to take your money --real cash-- and pay for things. Why are they placing limits on people's own money? If the account has enough balance for the purchase in question (and the money has been there for a while) you should be able to spend it as you wish.<p>As for linking a bank account. Not a big deal these days. You can open an account with $100. I don't see this as a problem, particularly if you are talking about paying thousands for conferences. Yes, it's a pain to keep track of. That's what Quicken/Quickbooks is for.

I'm pretty sure you can go to pay while not logged in to PayPal. Then enter your credit card directly. They will tell you it's linked to an account and do you want to login. But there is still an option to go ahead and just use the card.

I've had quite the bad experience with PayPal myself. I used to sell goods on the internet. Nothing shady, unless you consider Wordpress shady. Anyways, one day I try to charge against my PayPal account and I find out my account has been frozen and is pending investigation. I had not a lot of money, but more than a few dollars.<p>It's been frozen ever since (about 2 years). I've tried working with PayPal, but they've yet to help me in any constructive way. If I were to add to this post, this is the reason I won't allow PayPal payments on my site.

Another PITA issue I've hit with PayPal is trying to link Bank Accounts or Credit Cards from multiple countries to the same account... can't do it.<p>So even though I'm an Australian living in Canada, I'm stuck charging my Australian Credit Card and Bank account whenever I use Paypal. <i>Sigh</i>

In Australia, I believe that every PayPal account can also use a credit card - no matter what the card type. Just today I bought a CD with my Visa card, over PayPal.<p>I believe that it's because the Australian Competition &#38; Consumer Commission stepped in some time ago and told eBay that they couldn't force people to only use PayPal to pay for their products as this is third-line forcing.<p>I love strong competition law :-)

In a related vein: Try to change your name for your PayPal account. In Australia (and I assume globally), last I checked you had to fax 100 points of ID to them. Setting up an account requires nothing. I could wait until my CC expires and open a new account in my new name, but I've tied my account to my bank account too.

The screenshot that we are to assume is from paypal says that he's reached his "sending limit". What is that supposed to mean? In the text, he says he's reached his "spending limit". Is this just a weird typo from paypal? Or something stranger?

Open business accounts and use one personal account. Problem solved. You can open a business account with just a ficiticious business statement (a "dba") which you can get online instantly in some counties, or by mail in about a week.

This is an outlier issue.<p>For the average person selling things through PayPal, this is rare. If it's that important for your business, it shouldn't be a big deal to create a new bank account for each PayPal and link them to that.

PayPal is good in some ways (lowers the bar to becoming a merchant) it is broken and horrible in many other ways. Let's hope the competitors can improve upon things (Google, Amazon, Square, Facebook, Apple).

its less of a paypal problem and more the websites problem for not offering several payment options. Just paypal is easier for a majority of the population. If your particular paypal didn't work then you'd have to manually enter your credit information, which most people myself included don't like to do.

Could anyone summarize this article? Site is blocked as "tasteless" on the filter (?)

looks like they're really trying to push people to link their bank accounts to paypal.

This wouldn't be a problem if you accepted Bitcoin. ;)

Paypal forced me to open an account with them so I could buy shit by credit card through their interface. And so they could try to shove their other shitty products down my throat.<p>I want to set every single person who works for PayPal on fire.