Largest sum of cash you would keep in paypal account?

[proboscis]

I used to transfer the cash to my bank account at the end of each month but if I leave it at paypal it will earn 5.05 percent interest which is considerably higher than my savings account at the bank.

However, I have heard a few horror stories about paypal freezing accounts and so on, haven't heard anything lately though.

Even if I bought a cd it wouldn't earn that high of interest plus I would not have access to it for 12 months. With paypal I can withdraw it at anytime.

So what would you do? If you would leave a sum of cash with paypal, how much would it be?

Thanks!

[Swanny007]

Too many horror stories, I'd keep a few hundred $$, tops.

[johnafrid]

Never more than a $1000 but then I dont believe on the whole business of interest. I avoid both paying and receiving it. But thats just me.

[rocknbil]

For every horror story there are probably hundreds of users like myself who have not had a single problem with payPal in over 8 years. It's just the ones in trouble speak with a louder voice. :-)

Even so we flush it out at $400, not because of the horror stories but because it's not a great idea having an Internet company holding your hard-earned greenbacks.

[ecommerceprofit]

I move it at 3K - ebay owns them now and the stock price is good - no worries

[Essex_boy]

Your all brave souls!

I leave no more than areound $100 in the account in case of fraud, theft or paypal playing silly devils.

Around 3 years ago I had a complaint from a customer who had it in for me (they phone me at home etc) he complained to PP and they shut an account with them! I had noting in it so didnt bother responding.

It could have been nasty as at the time I was taking aroun $1500 a day, just think what could have happened

[bwnbwn]

I left (*Past tense) nothing 0 notta a thing if you ever get locked down then you are out for 8 months cuz our account was frozen for something I still don't know about...Never could get nothing from them other than we sold something banned but that is impossible we don't have anything banned. I emptied the account everyday so there wasn't anything tied up and I just washed my hands of them..

Used paypal as a secoundary gateway only 2 years without one complaint

Play Russian Rulate if you want

[peterdaly]

If you want some good interest without the worry, open up an account at one of the online "Direct" banks like ING Direct or HSBC direct.

They are currently paying something like 4.5-5%.

Money transfers in and out as fast as if it were in paypal.

[wyweb]

I don't leave a dime in there.

[Brett_Tabke]

I know people with over 1m in there. They use it as their biz act. when you crank out 500k a month in ebay transactions, you need liquidity. Cash back on the debit card is pretty excellent. There are many hidden perks as you put more ($) through pp.

> ebay owns them now and the stock price is good - no worries

If paypal has a problem, the entire net is in trouble.

> who have not had a single problem with payPal in over 8 years.

Ditto. It is the best service I have used online in 23 years. Rock solid.

[jwurunner]

Hi,

We have also never had any issues. We routinely keep up to 40-50k as a balance. Our account was "frozen" for an hour once when they requested some additional info. We also find that the chargeback percentage is a lot lower than with traditional credit cards.

[ogletree]

You could create a 2nd account that is completely separate and transfer money in there. If you just use the account for savings you will never get the account suspended. I have had my account for 8 years or so and never had any problems. I had them freeze up 2 payments one time. That was because somebody bought something from me with a stolen credit card. They have never shut the whole account down.

[oddsod]

I echo Brett's sentiments but I wouldn't keep a single cent in Paypal. They have some pretty idiotic ways of operating.

In the UK Paypal insist on a direct debit to your bank account even when they don't need it. They'll take a DD on the pretext of "identifying" you but won't release it once you're identified. Not at least without severing all links with your bank account and preventing you from transfering money from your bank to your Paypal account. And each time you want to transfer money you have to set up a new Direct Debit mandate and cancel it the next day. Idiotic!

When I pay out large sums of money from my Paypal account I prefer it came from my credit card - for various reasons: 1) I get longer to pay it back 2) I get 1% cashback etc. etc. But if you have funds in your Paypal account they'll debit THAT first instead of charging your card ... and there's nothing you can do about it. Idiotic!

When I talk to their reps I often end up explaining to them how some parts of the Paypal service operate. Were they asleep during their 30 minute induction? Idio...

And for those reasons I wouldn't keep any money in there.

[iThink]

$0 is exactly the amount that I like to leave in Paypal account. Reason is simple. If I have any problem with my bank account then I can simply pick up a phone and talk to someone knowledgeable at the bank's support or even personally visit the bank branch in case of any major issue. On the other hand Paypal is a living example of how NOT to run customer support. In fact theirs is the worst customer support that I have ever encountered and this poor customer support is the basic reason a lot of people including myself don't trust Paypal.

[pbradish]

I try to keep below $100 in my Paypal account at any given time. This is enough to cover most refunds if the problem arises with a customer - but I like to keep the account as empty as possible just in case the account were to freeze.

[limoshawn]

We used PayPal without incident for almost 3 years. Then one Saturday morning at 2am we received an email stating that our account had been "restricted". It was a valuable learning experience for us since PayPal was our only payment processor at the time. It was Tuesday before we got a response to our requests as to why our account had been restricted and that response was "we need more information about your business".
Long story short, after about 5 weeks we had the restriction lifted, we emptied the account and we no longer use PayPal as a payment processor. We now used multiple payment processors as to not keep all of our eggs in one basket which is what we should have been doing in the first place.
I believe that PayPal's handling of our account was very unprofessional and unfortunately this was not an isolated incident. I can say with all certainly it will never happen to us again.

[ispy]

To the guy with $40-$50K there. Get it out, now.

I will go a step further then not leaving money in there, and actually not want them to have the capability to transfer out of my bank at all.

[oddsod]

It's amazing how many people feel comfortable with Paypal having direct access to their bank account. It's not just whether a company will run away with the $71.23 in your account - giving such authority is also a lot about trusting that the company is easily accessible on the phone, has good customer service and speedily resolves problems. That, of course, is not always the case with Paypal.

Giving them access to your bank account is almost as good as keeping your entire bank account balance in your Paypal account.

ispy, the reason why so many people give Paypal that authority is because Paypal makes it difficult for them if they don't. Once Paypal have identified you they don't need a DD on your account but they still insist on it. Companies that insist on access to what they don't need are companies I have an inherent distrust for. If you don't need the direct link why do they need it? The only reason can be so they can take money out of account against your will (e.g. dispute situations).

[jecasc]

Normally I empty my account every day. Why should I leave any money in my paypal account? I cannot pay a single bill with paypal, if I would need money urgently it would take at least 5 days to get it and I do not receive any interest. As long as the money sits in my paypal account it is useless. I could as well put it in a chest and bury it on pirate island.

[ogletree]

PP does pay you interest. If you get the debit card you can get money out fast or you could pay a bill with the visa part of the debit card. If you use the visa part you get money back.

[jecasc]

PP does pay you interest. If you get the debit card you can get money out fast or you could pay a bill with the visa part of the debit card. If you use the visa part you get money back.

I think this features are not yet available in Germany.

[derekwong28]

With all this philshing around, it is highly inadvisable to keep large amounts of money in there. The philshing e-mails are getting more and more elaborate by the day. Even if you are careful, your employees may not be. This happened to our eBay account when one of our employees was fooled by an e-mail.

[shazer7]

I don't leave any money in my account, to many bad stories. If you are only leaving the money in there to build interest, then open an ING saving account. I know with processors such as 2checkout you can transfer the funs directly to your ING account, I don’t know if you can do this with PayPal.

[Brett_Tabke]

> Why should I leave any money in my paypal account?

- 5.05% cash on working capital.
- debit card access 24x7 with 1.5% cash back. I pay every biz expense I can with pp debit card.
- easy 2 day xfer to bank accts.

[Woz]

I don't keep much in Paypal, only a little play money really. But I too was a little concerned about them, or anyone for that matter, having access to my bank accounts, so I setup a seperate account that I use simply for that purpose and keep it empty until I need to make a transfer.

Onya
Woz

[Dpeper]

If your purely looking for interest research a money market account, that’s how pp treats your money when you choose to earn interest, and there are tons of reputable financial institutions offering that rate and ive seen slightly higher. If not a money market, a high yield savings will get you within a point if not better.

As far as pp for the purpose of a business account, solid your money isn't going anywhere.

But it probably shouldn’t be used as an investment vehicle.

[oddsod]

- 5.05% cash on working capital.
- debit card access 24x7 with 1.5% cash back. I pay every biz expense I can with pp debit card.
- easy 2 day xfer to bank accts.

It probably works differently in the US. In the UK even 15% interest would be wiped out from the cost of transferring to and from sterling to USD and it takes 5 days for an electronic transfer to my bank. I'm not sure about the debit card advantages - I don't believe we get that, either.

[Compworld]

In terms of their cash back, you can do better with AMEX Blue cash (1.5% - 5%) on all purchases. They now have a corp. one as well. In the UK, they have the AMEX red, which I believe give some money back and some to the aids relief. Chase has the freedom card, which gives anywhere from 1% - 3% back. Capital One now has one that also pays you back. There are so many choices, why use Paypal's debit card? They've may had pioneered the cash back program, but they are not FDIC insured. If you have to dispute a charge, who knows. I know if I have a problem, AMEX takes care of it and I am not responsible for a penny. Can you say the same for Paypal? Never had a bad experience, but they are still not a bank; thus they should not be treated as one.

[oddsod]

Did I say 5 days for a transfer? My bad. Make that five to seven days in the UK. Oh, sorry, amend that. Its 5-7 working days (because computers take weekends off).

So this being Easter weekend the money I transfered yesterday, the 5th, may reach my bank account on the 18th. Nice going, Paypal. When I pay people electronically it arrives the same day or the next. Paypal takes half a month. Anyone care to bet whether they pay interest during this two week fumbling?

[limoshawn]

- 5.05% cash on working capital.
- debit card access 24x7 with 1.5% cash back. I pay every biz expense I can with pp debit card.
- easy 2 day xfer to bank accts.

5 weeks of 0.0% interest, inactive debit card rejecting requests to pay those biz expenses, and no xfer to bank accts...... Priceless!

It happens, it's not the norm, but it happens. Last year I would have been on the soap box with Brett. We used PayPal for everything, loved it, loved the cash back when paying the ad bills with the debit card, loved getting a nice interest rate on funds that we had immediate access to. Unfortunately all that interest and cash back was gone after only one day of not being able to accept online payments when PayPal restricted our account.

Moral of the story:

Diversify; don't use PayPal as your only payment processor.

If you’re looking for a place to keep your money, Try a bank, PayPal is not a bank and they make no bones about telling you they’re not regulated like a bank.