PayPal and the new federal guidelines

I hope this is the correct place to post this but ran into an issue with PayPal today that deals with a known (and reputable as far as I can see from his many posts) seller in Singapore. It seems that they are now following our latest U.S. Government guidelines that deal with small Indonesian companies / sellers that are wanting their money when it comes into their account. I know that as a small seller of Surefire lights, custom knives and tomahawks on eBay in the past that I had to have 26 sales with 100% rating to start pulling my money immediately. This morning I went to purchase an item through PP and they refused to send the seller the money. After a phone call I'm told that PP, due to cases of fraud in the Indonesian and Asian areas, will no longer allow many transactions to many sellers in certain countries and will be following the Fed's guidelines (evidently this was just recently initiated by PP). It doesn't matter whether you want to do it through your CC on file, bank account or Bill Me Later account. PayPal will restrict you from going through them. I can understand their concerns. They don't want to lose money from a fraudulent transaction. But this may seriously hamstring both U.S. buyers and legitimate sellers across the big ponds trying to get started and opening a PP account. Anyone else having recent issues please feel free to share.

I'm sure that after their sale volume drops they'll come to realize that they're losing money and will decide to follow PP's policy.

PayPal has never backed down off their policies to date where losing money due to fraud is concerned. Plus they are following the latest Fed guidelines. If they are paying out large sums due to fraud I suspect this new policy will stay in place.

Hi guys, I'm the seller Ghostwalker54 is referring to. Here's PayPal' reply:

"I am sorry to hear that you have been told by buyers that upon calling PayPal USA that your company is fraudulent. I assure you that your PayPal account is fine and has not raised any flags with the payments you are receiving to be fraudulent. Having reviewed your account I do see that the payments mostly are coming from the US. There is a new ruling in the US which PayPal is line with that requires funds over $15.00 USD to be held for further review.


I'm afraid that this could be the reason that your buyers may have doubts in your company.* When they come across these cases, they only need to contact PayPal US for further clarification and they will be advised as to when the funds will be released. This is a step on their end and not yours as this ruling applies to them. I am once again truly sorry for the inconvenience caused with this."

I meant the shops in Asia.

Finally got to the bottom of what is going on. PayPal doesn't want to give buyer protection for U.S. buyers that purchase from Singapore, other parts of Indonesia and portions of Asia. What they did lie to me about was that I couldn't use my credit card on file with PP. I was able to do my transaction through PP with my cc on file with them. I couldn't use Bill Me Later or my bank account because they guarantee "Buyer Protection" with both. No such guarantee is given for my CC listed with them. The sad part is that this seller, like many others, has a spotless record on CPF and isn't a company. Yet he is targeted by PP only because he is from Singapore.

That's not very good for the sellers in Asia then. Reminds me of Ebay holding funds from sellers because they have only a few sales on their accounts/are from Asia.

Fighting fraud is a good thing, but it should be done on measureable criteria. That is: if you have some rule in place concerning a minimum # of successful transactions before releasing funds, apply that rule to all starting sellers. Not just ones from countries X, Y or Z.

But hey, PayPal sucks! (as usual, in case you didn't know).