PayPal inactivity fee
paypal.com
paypal.com
Almost all horror stories you hear about PayPal involve the user treating PayPal like they were a bank. Just do not store money in PayPal... sweep nightly if you use PayPal for business. They even provide tools to make this automated.
The reason this policy exists is likely to remove super old liabilities for long-dormant accounts that have been long forgotten about.
PayPal is not interested in storing funds forever... they want you to buy stuff with it or transfer it to your real bank account.
This policy seems aimed at convincing people to "move it or lose it"...
1. Send €5. Add greeting note. 2. refuse to reveal last name and DOB of person mentioned in the greeting note to Paypal. 3. Have your account blocked and enter mailing loop hell with an Indian call center.
1. Have your account blocked for no reason 2. That's it.
No, Sir. I'm sorry. It's not just the storing of money side that doesn't work with Paypal.
Mind boggling.
Close your PayPal accounts.
I hate paypal
Really interesting to hear. I haven't been a huge user of PayPal since eBay introduced Managed Payments, but my experiences with them in the past have always been surprisingly good.
That said, perhaps I was getting different support since they were probably processing around 10k of sales a month for us.
PayPal is not a bank, but but rather operates banking services performed through Synchrony Bank. PayPal manages individual accounts within Synchrony, and it performs required communications and actions on behalf of Synchrony bank. In the U.S., the bank is ultimately responsible for servicing these accounts, but a partner like PayPal can take on that responsibility with the bank's oversight.
Some more info for the curious: investopedia.com/terms/d/dormant-account.asp
Rather than perform this (potentially expensive and arduous) process of handing dormant funds over to the governing state, companies like PayPal opt to just slowly absorb dormant accounts. It's scummy and I hate it. I assume this transfer of funds also keeps the account from being legally considered dormant (since funds did move).
Last time I checked they sure as hell have a banking license and operate in Luxembourg. Wikipedia says:
"Since July 2007, PayPal has operated across the European Union as a Luxembourg-based bank." [1]
I suppose they're not a bank in USA, but the world (and HN readership) is bigger than USA (also bigger than where I'm from; EU).
Minor nit, but I don't think we need a neologism for 1,000 year-old institutions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/business/dealbook/the-evo...
I thought it was just a flash new term cryptobros use to sound smrt.
Last year, I received emails from a bank I used 10 years ago, asking me to contact them. It turned out they'd been writing to an old address. I thought I'd closed the account, but it had £0.75 in it.
The bank spent much more than that trying to contact me, and I wasted far more time than it was worth closing the account. (They were used to the problem, I asked them to donate the money to charity.)
Sir: That's a great idea! But I have a better idea that will generate ten times as much money - charge 10 dollars instead! I'm a genius. claims the idea, thinks about the promotion
Add a middle layer between your bank and paypal.
Once you sync your bank account, Paypal can claw funds from your account for any reason it deems necessary.
Do not give them this access into your business's main operating account. Bite the bullet and open a separate, standalone DDA with another bank (not the same bank, that won't achieve its intended effect).
And don't give them a SEPA mandate at all; there's a small link on the "add bank account" page that bypasses the SDD mandate while still allowing use of the IBAN for withdrawals.
Or, better yet... don't use PayPal at all. I closed my account years ago and don't regret it one bit.
In Britain, I think PayPal uses a direct debit, so it's easy to reverse any transaction.
This is the technically correct term used with US-based vanilla bank accounts that are FDIC insured
I went thru the hassle of opening a new account with a new institution just for this. We may still close paypal after all (which is what i'd love to do in the first place)
That’s exactly what this is. I don’t believe it’s meant to be a money grab towards existing customers (simply because it’s such a bad one). Everything has a lifetime. PayPal by now is full of accounts from dead people, money nobody is ever going to reclaim (even if someone out there has a better claim to it).
This money has to go somewhere, otherwise it’s very literally dormant. In my country (Belgium), the government has tools to let people find and reclaim money they may be owed that is sitting in bank accounts. But something like PayPal is not really able to do this.
With dormant fees, PayPal is able to create a lifetime on accounts with dormant money… they will eventually zero out.
That said, they’re still scum and nobody should use PayPal, ever, for anything. I work in fintech - if you’re using PayPal and need recommendations to replace it, reply with your use case and I’ll respond.
In the US, there's also a system of unclaimed property, administered by each state. States hold onto such property, and at least the few states I've lived in allow you to search online for it, and provide a means to have it sent to you on request. I've found a couple hundred dollars over the past 20 years, mostly cases where I've overpaid some sort of account, and then the account was closed, though I recall one case where Google had been the one to submit some unclaimed property to the state in my name (never found out what it was from).
PayPal could certainly set an inactivity limit -- say 5 years -- and then turn the funds over to the state listed in the account's user information. But they'd rather keep the money, and slowly siphon it off. I agree that this is a pretty bad money grab, but there's absolutely another option that would allow a PayPal user to reclaim that money later on.
....I'd imagine most of that would be "paying for stuff that has paypal as only payment method", or otherwise alternative being putting your CC information on the site you will use once and never again, and hoping that they have better security than paypal.
And the rest being "well I want to give my user easy way to pay for stuff and paypal is just that"
Revolut also followed suit and is available all over Europe. Wise has virtual cards but you need to regenerate them yourself.
I'm accepting donations for my open source software project (FreeSewing.org). I also need the shipping address because I send a little thank-you. What should I use instead that's available to people from different countries?
PS; Also in Belgium btw, hi!
If you don’t want a credit card because you don’t want debt, what you likely want is a debit card. Most banks issue it for free.
If you are in the UK, make sure to tell your bank to set your overdraft to zero.
If you are in the US, keep in mind that you are not building credit by choosing to never use a credit card (and yes I think it is stupid as well). I know there are zero-fee credit cards that can act as debit cards, I can find some recommendation if you like.
In the US, Privacy.com is also a cool issuer of virtual cards which may have features you are interested in.
If for some reason you don’t want a debit card either because you hate physical cards or something, know that Google Pay and Apple Pay also issue virtual cards on your behalf, and in some countries don’t need a card as payment method.
PS: All money is debt :)
If a merchant fraudulently -- or even accidentally -- debits your bank account, then that money is gone. In many cases you will be able to get it back, but how long will that take? Days? Weeks? More? If the bad transaction is large enough, maybe you won't make your rent/mortgage payment that month. But with a credit card, the money is still in your bank account, and you can dispute the charge, and have it removed before you've spent your own money on it.
Yes, credit cards do require some discipline. I pay mine off every month, and incur no interest charges, but sure, there's the possibility that I could charge enough in a month such that I wouldn't have the cash in my checking account to cover it at the end of the month. I generally don't consider this an issue, though, as I don't have a compulsive spending problem, and I track my purchases well enough in any case.
In this day and age of incredibly poor customer service, I think it's invaluable to have some intermediary fronting the money for my purchases, in a way that lets me dispute transactions I think are in error before having to spend my own money on them.
Locks work because it stops a lot of opportunity crime. Simple and effective: For everything else, we have laws.
With consumer protection, what the 'get a credit card' crowd are basically saying is that sure, locks are available, but you have to be good enough to get one. Sorry about your luck, poor people that can't get one. Consumer protection laws are basically locks for everyone.
And nobody is denied a credit card just for being poor. What keeps you from getting a credit card is if you're poor but spend like you're rich, and so end up delinquent on a bunch of debt that bank gets stuck with.
What exactly are the downsides I've had?
As long as you never defaulted on a loan or forgot/failed to pay a bill you automatically have a perfect credit score in Germany.
Some countries such as the UK have a credit system but CCs are not involved.
You are saying the ECB should be having a bad time. Fair.
PayPal is a licensed bank in Europe [1]
[1] https://thebanks.eu/banks/16281/bank_identifiers
Edit: changed the link because it was a bit misleading
They are not allowed to change the terms of business without the customer actively accepting the change. This seems the most applicable case here. I guess such fee was not at all in their terms before, so just sending an email that now there is won't work.
Another case that loans must not have handling fees (on top of interest) might be less applicable here.
There was also a case affecting all businesses many years ago. A debt does not expire earlier than 10 years later. So if the business still owns the customer something, they can't just say, oh sorry it has expired earlier. This affects mostly gift certificates or prepaid phone subscriptions, but why not "inactive" money at Paypal.
worked for me until I logged in (EU), now it returns "he page you're looking for is no longer available.". I just checked in another fresh browser and I can read it fine.
Looks like it magically stops existing as soon as you log in from EU.
>Note: Personal accounts registered in Germany/Austria/Italy/Greece/Hungary/Poland are excluded from the inactivity fee assessment for 2022.
yep, excluded and apparently its secret! WTF does "for 2022" mean here? Are they planning to hide it until they can finally charge me?
I don't know, but curious to know. Because I am in that situation.
The law is written such that you are either allowed to do nothing or you are a full blown bank. There is no carveout for startups or anyone who doesn't want to run a full bank.
That's something I noticed many years ago when PayPal complaints were big on Slashdot, and I was confused about why anyone would be leaving significant sums in their PayPal account. They've always made bank transfers pretty easy.
Unless you prefer not to link your PayPal to a bank account. There are horror stories out there of PayPal making bank withdrawals customers feel they didn't authorize.
I wish you could get them to just simply mail you a cheque to get your money out.
Can they sue you or do they have to use binding arbitration? (I just find it interesting because you certainly can't sue them.)
What bank do you use? I'm with one of those neobanks(n26) and they make me talk to customer support first.
I don't know if they've fixed that in the years since, but I've not linked a bank account since.
If PayPal take money from my account and I don't like it, it's a few clicks in online banking, or a phone call to the bank, to reverse the transaction and block any future transactions.
It is the same system as used for an electricity bill, where a variable amount is collected each time.
But this is the first time I've heard it described the way you do. Why don't they make that more clear?
They can't keep getting away with this.
https://www.apra.gov.au/register-of-authorised-deposit-takin...
If you sign up to be an authorised deposit taking institute, you actually have to adhere to that!
It varies by jurisdiction. But if you think your model is that of a bank in one to register as a bank; MAYBE YOU ARE A BANK
Is this new? Last time I used PayPal for an NPO, they had no such thing.
Unfortunately I can't test it or keep it updated anymore because, despite giving them many hundreds of dollars in legitimate eBay business fees, I was perma-banned without recourse (and in the process, I had to manually find via my bank a $1000+ clawback transfer they did but could not find in their system anywhere, and give them the info, so they could find it and eventually return it).
If you abused a personal account... well that may be a clue into why your account was frozen. PayPal only makes money off business accounts and their transactional fees... if you tried to circumvent that and were obviously operating a business, then they would have good reason to freeze your account.
Also, PayPal hasn't been part of eBay since 2014ish...
1) PayPal does not receive fees from your eBay activities. They are two completely separate companies. PayPal makes money by charging for business services. They provide free personal services as a convenience for everyone else - but the lights are paid for by business fees.
2) If you read the TOS for personal accounts, your eBay activity would be allowed if it was personal sale of stuff (think a Craigslist analog) or between friends and family members. Once you start operating a business on eBay and are clearly receiving payments for goods and/or services in a routine fashion that appears like a business - PayPal is going to want their cut too. This is not unreasonable.
3) A personal account has no need for sweeping, which is my guess as-to why this feature doesn't exist there. Sweeping is literally only useful for businesses that accrue daily revenue into the account... and if you are receiving daily revenue, you are operating a business - see #2 above.
It seems the entire problem was a misunderstanding.
And PayPal requires you link an account for verification now.
So it isn't really practical to use it as you describe - you're giving yourself a false sense of security.
Sounds even worse than the issues that made me abandon them originally (seizing on-paypal funds and preventing withdrawal via making verification process broken and obtuse)
What's the problem here? If you give them access to your main bank account, you're an idiot. Just set up a separate account for the sole purpose of linking to PayPal. You should do the same for any case where you need to link a bank account to an external entity.
Interesting, I wonder if this is only for new accounts? I've had an account for a good 20 years now, and I don't have a bank account linked, only credit cards.
Isn't that what most places do these days? If you're providing a service, you are the one determining what you "earn".
Paypal recently, after a decade or so of use, demanded I hand over multiple forms of ID. I refused and said close the account. They refuse to close the account because I have not handed over ID documents that I don't want them to have on their files because they are untrustworthy both ethically and in terms of competence as you guys know well.
So the account is there ready to be hacked. I've pointed this out to them on about 20 separate occasions and they refuse to close it.
Paypal are crooks. It is in their dna. They're crooks for no reason, just from force of habit. You cannot trust them in any way. Society allowing them to have any market power whatsoever is completely insane. Yet another case of a cpu attached to a network being on the critical path of what some company is doing preventing otherwise intelligent humans from thinking a normal, critical fasshion about what they are doing and forming a minimally appropriate response, trapping the rest of us who literally cannot act at all.
They've cut out the middleman and will just trick you directly. I don't have an account but I use it a lot for discogs. Everytime, it goes one of three ways.
1) They have a prechecked "Create Account" option, so that completing the purchase creates an account.
2) They use the classic "big, bold button" dark pattern, so that completing the purchase creates an account.
3) They require creating an account to complete the purchase. I've cancelled orders over this one.
It hasn't even been a progression. I've seen all three recently, and which one I get seems to be a dice roll.
Likewise.
You don't need to see my identification
We don't need to see your identification.
We can part ways and go about our business
Move along
Move along, move along..
Paypal is for these groups:
1) criminals
2) princes in Nigeria
3) people too lazzy - to setup a merchant account.
AND the most reliable/usable p2p micropayments UX for non-technical people and international, under one umbrella. Yes there's crypto but good luck getting your parents to use.
Unlike in Europe and elsewhere, Americans don't have good (and somewhat standardized UX for) direct payments from bank (e-check sucks), or bank-to-bank. And you'd never want to use wire ($18+) for paying friend back for pizza.
What does it leave? CashApp, Zelle, etc. ? And Wise for international. They only address a subset of the latter use case.
Wow, really? Never have actually encountered a site like that. So I can only assume it's rare enough such that it wouldn't be much of a hassle to just refuse to do purchase things from those websites.
Sending and receiving wire transfers is free with my bank, but even still no way I’d ever use it for that use case.
What else do you want them to do? There's a bagillion compromised PayPal accounts actively scamming people. It's why PayPal G&S is the gold standard for buying stuff from people online. Like I get that closing the account seems like a safe action but letting someone who isn't the account owner do anything with the account is bad move.
There was no fraud detection, no flags, no payments to me ever. None.
Paypal demanded, out of the blue copies of drivers licenses, passports, bank statements etc that they have no right to, claiming they needed them to comply with law. Suspicious much? Well I sure was and am. They have only ever been an online click-clack machine for my credit card and nothing else. Ever.
I have the _right_ to refuse to do business with them if they unilaterally change their rules. I have done so.
There /can/ be /zero/ fraud possible by closing the account because I don't trust them and going elsewhere to get my credit card processed.
From their point of view it would be a negative metric. Better to not have declining account numbers you have to report so just block them.
They are just crooks from top to bottom. It's their default response. They are arrogant, obnoxious and deserve to be prosecuted and should be.
What I want them to do is repect my wishes not to be associated with them in any way and not to have an identity theft vector avaialble with people and an organisation I have justifiably decided don't trust when I have told them that is what I now want.
So f%#k them and anyone sticking up for the crooks they are.
I stopped reading your rant here because it's clear you are not familiar with financial regulations.
I think the issue is with shifting expectations with no clear way to terminate a business relationship. Not sure how being "familiar with financial regulations" would change that.
For what it's worth, harry8's post inspired me to close my Paypal account while I still can. Done.
Enlighten me if my knowledge has gone amiss.
>> Paypal demanded, out of the blue copies of drivers licenses, passports, bank statements etc that they have no right to, claiming they needed them to comply with law.
Is a statement of fact. Make your accusation plainly about it if you choose to do so or maybe apologise for insinuating it?
So clearly these "financial regulations" you speak of don't actually exist, or at least PayPal has just -- lucky for me -- conveniently forgot to comply with them for my account.
Also consider that there are two things at issue here: account ownership, and account operation.
PayPal seems to not believe that the grandparent is even the owner of the account. If they did, then they'd allow him to close the account. That seems distinct from allowing someone to operate the account, that is, perform financial transactions. Which, sure, depending on the kind of transactions or kind of account, that might require further verification. (But assuming the GP is telling the full story of how he uses the account, PayPal certainly does not legally need further documentation.)
So it's a little weird PayPal has taken the stance they've taken. If all they cared about was complying with "financial regulations", then they should have no problem with the account owner asking them to close the account. But clearly they are doing something shady, because presumably knowing the account password, or at least demonstrating having control of the email address and/or phone number (or other contact method) associated with the account, should be enough to satisfy PayPal in order to close the account. The fact that it isn't is a red flag that should make us question PayPal's motives here.
At any rate, the fact remains that using a PayPal account solely to pay for stuff online should not invoke any "financial regulations" requiring the account owner to upload ID photos or other documentation. If that were the case, every intermediary in payment processing -- like Stripe, Venmo, Square Cash, or even Google Pay (all entities I use but have never given identity documentation to) -- would be required to collect this information.
Now remove the "cpu on a network" being involved and see if you can think it through. You've never been murdered so there's no need for laws and regs. Equivalent with no cpu on a network. Obviously murder is pretty extreme and selected on that basis to underline the principle.
The account (email) that created the PayPal account is requesting it to be deleted, that should be sufficient. If both accounts have been insecurely breached, that's really the user's fault. PayPal could even mark the account as pending deletion after 30 days if we're really worried about this.
You shouldn't be able to stand around and blackmail the user for even more personal information to sell or "accidentally leak" to advertisers under the guise of "security."
At the same time PayPal is almost aways side with buyer no matter where account was open.
> What else do you want them to do? There's a bagillion compromised PayPal accounts actively scamming people
... actually check using humans and not "algorithm told me it's a fraud, therefore it's a fraud" ?
I had dumbassery like that trigger (not on pp) just because I didn't use account for few months then used it once...
- The person asking to close the account isn't the same person the account belongs to, and the person who created the account is on a vacation or something
- There is some nefarious activity in progress and closing the account would hamper dealing with it
...and after this they can close the account without demanding the ID.
If you use PayPal Credit with 0% to buy something, then make the automatic payments at the rate that they suggest...
You will end up missing the time frame for 0%. They will charge you the full interest.
It's sounds like something really illegal.
Their suggested auto payments pay everything off with 0% afaik.
This is all US info I have.
Those aren't an exception -- they just aren't credit cards at all. They're charge cards.
Are there any decent alternatives that are viable competitors to PayPal that one might want to move to if their terms become unacceptable? If not, I guess there's always the notion of refusing to do business with those who use PayPal as their one and only payment processor.
I guess this lack of competition is the exact reason why PayPal can behave as such. I'm writing this as a very happy 10+ years PayPal user, however the number of complaints and horror stories I've read during all those years is so large that it probably means I'm rather the exception than the rule, for now (touches various things).
I'd say it's not the lack of competition that allows PayPal to have the user agreement they do.
It's the fact that PayPal's user agreement is as liberal as running a successful money transmitter business can allow.
Definition of Europe seems to be EU, EFTA (ex. Switzerland which is governed by PayPal Pte. Ltd.), and UK.
Original comment follows:
--------------------------
Seems not applicable to PayPal Singapore (not just for Singapore, it handles much of Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America and certain European countries like Switzerland): https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/SG/en/ua-1031...
Edit: And PayPal Inc. (US): https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/US/en/ua-1107....
Is it something that Luxembourg or EU required to PayPal (Europe) Sàrl (et Cie, SCA) (https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/LU/en/ua-1031...) clients?
PayPal Canada Co.: https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/CA/en/ua-0919...
This is likely because it’s the EEA, which is the EU+EFTA-CH.
I guess PayPal not setting up a UK subsidiary is mainly due to FCA being a decent institution (Britons might disagree, but have you tried complaining to the Luxembourg CSSF?)
A few years ago I played a browser game, Game of Thrones Winter is Coming. Chinese company. I'm in the EU. In the EU we have laws and regulations, if someone tries to scam you, you usually get your money or the product. The US has less support for the customer, aka the customer is in a worse place. In China you as a foreigner have no support. I bought a 20 eur package of Margery Tyrell, because I like the way she looks. I thought when I buy I, I would have her in my collection and could use her as my avatar. I bought it, but what I bought was 5 out of 10 requires tokens to unlock the base version of her. So I paid 20 eur for effectively nothing. It wasn't mentioned anywhere that I would need 10 tokens. The next 5 tokens would cost 70 eur! I wrote PayPal that this was a scam and that I wanted my money back. The response was that I have no proof and the case was closed with no way of appealing. I closed my PayPal account and will never return. I will also never spend money on a Chinese game.
What's a good alternative?
The total impact to my life has been about 35 seconds of inconvenience adding a CC to steam and a couple other things instead of paying with PayPal.
I'm in the habit now of divesting myself from any financial institution that attempts to influence or place controls on how I spend my money, or that gets involved with politics in pretty much any way, "right" or "left". I want my financial institution to be Switzerland and accountable only to their fiduciary responsibility.
1 - https://resources.turbosquid.com/how-do-i-close-my-account/#....
Note, Venmo is owned by Paypal.
Source: I used to work there..
> If an account no longer has a positive balance after being charged this fee and remains inactive for another 60 days, this account may be closed after the 60 days have passed.
It's a way for PayPal to slowly siphon and eventually drain your account balance.
Logged into PayPal to find out when I joined and found out there’s a couple hundred bucks in there I didn’t know about so thanks.
And as a PayPal customer since 2000 all I can say is “fuck you, PayPal”.
By accident I found that for some payments they don't require the phone number (for 2FA which I never enabled/activated) - so I'm slowly "withdrawing" by searching for vendors that accept this method of payments. WTF, give me my money back, PayPal!
I just love it so much when there is a footnote star, but no corresponding footnote.
It's pretty funny too, since someone asked me to Paypal them some money shortly after. As I didn't have an account anymore, we used Zelle instead.
I guess some middle manager gets to make some slides about how they made x amount of money out of inactivity fees, while ignoring all of the business the company lost.
This is the magic of HN. One day the community will be decrying crypto for being unregulated. "It is all a scam", "We need reasonable regulation", "Crypto is a ponzi", "There's no legitimate reason for irreversible transactions", a million more stock lines we have all read here before.
The next day HN will attack PayPal for their exorbitant fees, policies and other hurdles which are necessary to comply with regulations.
While some of PayPal's business policies are not defensible, most are understandable. Especially when you consider the regulatory overhead they have as a worldwide business.
If HN doesn't like it, one solution would be a less regulated environment. If users love regulations, they should accept the fees as a cost of compliance. Either way, if others choose to operate in an unregulated cryptosphere, it would be nice to see a bit of "live and let live".
You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Would it be more palatable if I had singled out individual users and their post histories?
I wonder if a creative lawyer could argue that the users with a PayPal card effectively have a gift card - which would make this illegal in the US for at least that specific subset of US users.
> Note: Managed accounts and accounts held by customers in the province of Alberta, which have a balance of more than $250 CAD and which have been inactive for less than five years are excluded. Accounts which have a balance equal or less than the existing FX settlement amount are also excluded.
> Note: Personal accounts registered in Germany/Austria/Italy/Greece/Hungary/Poland are excluded from the inactivity fee assessment for 2022.
> I wonder if a creative lawyer could argue that the users with a PayPal card effectively have a gift card - which would make this illegal in the US for at least that specific subset of US users.
Maybe that's why they refrained it applying to US users?
Why might that be?
> You can use your PayPal account for any of the following simple actions before December 13, 2022 to avoid the fee: Log in to your account; or ...
So to avoid the fee, transfer out any balance and then log in once a year. Seems doable.
And technically, if you really didn't want to log in and if you have any merchants linked to your Paypal that can do auto-debit, you could make a purchase at that merchant to draw your balance down to zero.
I even talked to a Lawyer about this, who also got really pissed off at PayPal's attitude. Alas there is no money in the account so he said there really wasn't anything to do.
The only person that can close the account seems to be my dead wife, and she appears to have no current interests in PayPal's shenanigans'.
So basically just zero out your account and don't worry about it? I'm just glad it's not a $2,500 fee!
> If an account no longer has a positive balance after being charged this fee and remains inactive for another 60 days, this account may be closed after the 60 days have passed.
So, I guess they are going to autodelete my account (which has always held a zero balance)?
Good riddance.
When it came to internet money they had a huge head start, the first mover of first movers and here they are; they are to payments what skype is to phone calls.
The only option I have is to call them on a US number. I tried that and it went through an automated bot. Sorry PayPal, good luck with business
Bitcoin feels like russian roulette and old PayPal competitors don't seem to want my money (AliPay comes to mind)
Even if the end goal is profitability, seems they are very eager to throw their goodwill/brand into the wood chipper, which is going to be counterproductive in the end.
There are already tons of PayPal equivalent services that anybody can use. Not even sure what the differentiator is for them, or why they are relevant anymore.
This is based on some theory about the lifetime value of a customer. If that can be determined to be zero or negative...
Search for dormant accounts and local regulators and I suspect you'll find an answer quickly.
How I could collect such fee ?
They do so until you run out of money, then they close your account.
If you have money in your PayPal account, now is the time to withdraw it. If not, your account will eventually be closed.
So, if they made a fee for that, isn't them who shall pay it in this case ?
- as they were in position to fix it but didn't, when I did everything I could and I'm not responsible for it?
(AFAIR they made some change which locked me out.)
It's not backwards - if they made a rule, why would they not follow it the same way as shall I ? To see me in court ??
Presumably, this will hit anyone who forgot they had a PayPal account. They'll just take your money in the account if you have it to cover the fee, or they'll levy the fee and close your account, and you still owe that money.
> Accounts with zero balance won’t be impacted by this fee and this charge won’t result in any negative balance.
> If an account no longer has a positive balance after being charged this fee and remains inactive for another 60 days, this account may be closed after the 60 days have passed.
There may be a million other reasons, but it’s the same reasons banks have account fees — to harvest the lost balances already on their books.
Seriously, the hell is wrong with PayPal.
The only way I found to easily transfer money is to buy and immediately sell bitcoin.
> PayPal customers enjoy a range of benefits associated with their accounts, including a full suite of tools, products, blah blah blah blah
Jesus Christ, get to the point and just answer the question already. Whoever wrote this absolutely knows the company is doing something slimy.
One would wonder why someone would leave sums of money in an online account without even checking that it still existed at least once a year!
Then you suddenly have to pay an account fee or pay a custody fee if you keep more than 50.000€ in your account.
That's probably why Paypal excludes German accounts from their fees. Would they even be able to process anything on paper?
Check this: https://www.ing.de/hilfe/neueagb/
> In der Vergangenheit sind wir von Ihrer Zustimmung ausgegangen, wenn Sie den mitgeteilten Änderungen nicht innerhalb von 2 Monaten widersprochen haben. Seit dem Urteil des Bundesgerichtshofs im April 2021 zu den Allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen der Banken benötigen wir nun Ihre ausdrückliche Zustimmung.
> Ab Ende November geht es los – dann brauchen wir das erste Mal Ihre Zustimmung. Im Online-Banking oder in der neuesten Version der App.
So this clearly doesn't require a paper process.
The bigger question is, why do you think this isn't stealing?