Paypal taking money from my bank account

[Elantra]

Paypal are now taking money from my bank account
yet they have my credit card number they seem to be bypassing this & going straight to my bank account.
If I want to transfer money from my account I need pass word, security number to get in, then a SMS number to confirm.
How come paypal don't need any of this?
I have never knowingly given permission for them to access my account

[*smee*]

Somewhere along the line you must have given authority
as you say , you might not of knowingly given them authority
but wiyhout authority they cant so you must have
Log into your paypal account and check out all the account details
you will find it in linked to your bank account in there somewhere

[*Brum6y*]

As Smee said ... somewhere along the line you will have given them authority to access your bank account.

I mean, how did they get your bank account details in the first place?  You obviously entered them into PayPal - and I daresay there would have been some information via a policy or other declaration available at the time that would have opened up this possibility for them to do so legally.  Unfortunately, some of the "disclosures" I have seen are very wordy and can contain references to references which can be a nightmare to navigate.  PayPal and eBay are no exceptions.  The other thing is ... did you actually read all the policy and disclosure information before proceeding? (presuming you could find it all)  If you didn't, don't feel you are alone - most people don't and many don't bother at all.

Whether PayPal's action in accessing your bank account is warranted is a separate question.  They may have a valid reason for doing so, so it might be wise to ring them up and ask.

As for their ability to pull funds from your account - you might not be too happy with how easy that is (well, at least as it was a few years ago).  Financial institutions can receive funds by simply providing the appropriate account information in an electronic request and shipping it off to the payment, clearing and settlement systems we have in Australia.  No "authority" is confirmed by your bank, they simply presume that a requesting institution has that authority and just process the request.  Also, the name of an account is never checked, simply because variations in the exact character string used render this a time-consuming exercise - and that it isn't necessary to complete a transfer.

Also,you don't really have any control over how much or how frequently such transfers are made other than taking the requesting institution to task.  PayPal requests funds from your bank - and your bank gives it to them.

This is one reason why you should be careful about disclosing your bank account details.

[*CountessA*]

Paypal are now taking money from my bank account
yet they have my credit card number they seem to be bypassing this & going straight to my bank account.
If I want to transfer money from my account I need pass word, security number to get in, then a SMS number to confirm.
How come paypal don't need any of this?
I have never knowingly given permission for them to access my account

It's disturbing and annoying, isn't it?

I presume you mean that when you pay for something using PayPal, the default payment source seems to have "reset" itself to your bank account rather than credit card or debit card...? It's the case with me, too. I have to manually change the source every time I use PayPal.

This is the case even though I set the source as a default to my card some time ago.


It appears to have reset after some PayPal update.


PayPal have automatic permission to take funds from your attached bank account because it's part of the usual lengthy T&C (which frankly almost no-one ever reads).

You can remove your bank account details from PayPal, but

   a) there's no guarantee that PayPal will not still have your bank account details on file, and
   b) you will then not be able to transfer funds TO your bank account FROM PayPal.

Some people suggest having a special bank account set up solely for the purpose of PayPal transfers. This limits the risks - but be aware that unless you double-check every time you use PayPal for paying someone, and make sure that the funding source is NOT the bank account, you would run the risk of having a dishonour fee if PayPal tries to take the money out of that bank account to transfer to the seller, rather than taking the money from your c/c.

As annoying as it is, the only thing I can do is double-check every single time I make a payment through PayPal - every... single... time. I double-check and triple-check.

[Elantra]

Paypal are now taking money from my bank account
yet they have my credit card number they seem to be bypassing this & going straight to my bank account.
If I want to transfer money from my account I need pass word, security number to get in, then a SMS number to confirm.
How come paypal don't need any of this?
I have never knowingly given permission for them to access my account

It's disturbing and annoying, isn't it?

I presume you mean that when you pay for something using PayPal, the default payment source seems to have "reset" itself to your bank account rather than credit card or debit card...? It's the case with me, too. I have to manually change the source every time I use PayPal.

This is the case even though I set the source as a default to my card some time ago.


It appears to have reset after some PayPal update.


PayPal have automatic permission to take funds from your attached bank account because it's part of the usual lengthy T&C (which frankly almost no-one ever reads).

You can remove your bank account details from PayPal, but

   a) there's no guarantee that PayPal will not still have your bank account details on file, and
   b) you will then not be able to transfer funds TO your bank account FROM PayPal.

Some people suggest having a special bank account set up solely for the purpose of PayPal transfers. This limits the risks - but be aware that unless you double-check every time you use PayPal for paying someone, and make sure that the funding source is NOT the bank account, you would run the risk of having a dishonour fee if PayPal tries to take the money out of that bank account to transfer to the seller, rather than taking the money from your c/c.

As annoying as it is, the only thing I can do is double-check every single time I make a payment through PayPal - every... single... time. I double-check and triple-check.

Exactly right, I have deleted my bank details.
But whenever I want transfer money from items sold to my bank I will have to add details.
Apparently when you are paying for something there is a change payment you can click on to make the C/C your default payment??? will check for that next time I buy something.

[*Brum6y*]

It appears to have reset after some PayPal update.

This statement points to a possibility which annoys the heck out of me.

Having worked in the IT industry of the financial sector for several decades, the prospect of user defined preferences having been "inadvertently" changed just wreaks.  Changes to financial systems should be tested to a high standard, not only to safeguard the customers, but to also safeguard the business.  Mucking around with people's money enters into the realm of criminality and if that occurs through improperly tested changes, then the word "negligence" gets added.  If the change results in program code not looking up the customer's preference as it should, but using a value derived through some other means, then someone needs to be horsewhipped.

While I have no concrete evidence to support the following theory, the circumstantial evidence easily allows for it...
* As part of an update, PayPal could go through their databases and change everybody's payment source to "bank" instead of "credit card"
* It is almost certain they will be using a relational database, which can be updated using SQL - and the SQL statement to achieve the abovementioned change could be written on one line.

Benefits to PayPal are:
* Bank transfers incur no fees, whereas card transactions do.  PayPal holds on to more of the money.
* Bank transfers take longer to "process" and PayPal seem to extend this time by a number of days over my experience of the time it takes for bank to bank transfers to be completed.  As a result, the funds "passing through" PayPal are available to them for a couple of extra days.  A figure I found for this (from 2011) was over $300 million per day. So, if you could slow up the movement of money for 3 days, you would have a sum approaching $1 billion sitting under PayPal's control at any one point in time.  Sure the first day's $300 million would have to be passed on eventually, but the fourth day's $300M would come in and top up the kitty.  This gives you a rolling balance of around the $1 billion mark - and it will be sitting there every day of the year.  (Sure there will be seasonal variations and they will average out - but you can see the magnitude of what we are talking about.)
* Oh, and in addition to this "rolling balance", you can ADD the amounts held as a "PayPal balance".  That is money people explicitly leave in the hands of PayPal - and I'm sure PayPal loves every cent of it.
* Now, can you imagine PayPal (or anyone for that matter) sitting on $1 billion in liquid funds and not get some sort of benefit...?  (The short term money market springs to mind)

I point to the value of this for PayPal when the exchange rates plummeted a couple of years ago.  As we all know, PayPal offers it's own exchange rate for overseas transactions and, like all such financial bodies, will seek to profit through that by adding a margin.  They can also make money when exchange rates change - and they can also lose if the movement goes the wrong way or moves too quickly for them to respond, which is what I can imagine may have happened a couple of years ago.  For any of you who may remember, funds passing through PayPal in the following weeks took a few more days than normal.  This would have bumped up the "rolling balance" for a time that would have been useful...

Now, I do admit this is conjecture - but it has a logic about it.