Consumer complaint received 2018-07-11
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: VA
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Other service problem

Complaint:
This summer my family will rent a vacation home in XXXX XXXX for a week. The home owner asked me to pay via PayPal, and I happily agreed to do so. I have been a PayPal account holder since 2012, and primarily use the account to safely process online payments, and occasionally to send or receive money from family and friends. 

For the first time ever, when I tried to send money via PayPal to the home owner, PayPal asked for both my social security number and my date of birth. I could not bypass this. I tried to continue the transaction online without any of this information, and then without my social security number but with my date of birth. PayPal would not allow me to move forward. 

I called the PayPal customer service line, for which I had to receive a special one-use-only code. The customer service representative, whose name was XXXX, at first insisted that PayPal never asks for SSNs and said that she thought I was at a phishing site. XXXX patiently walked me through attempting to process the transaction through a different browser and then through a different device. In order to even begin the transaction on my mobile phone, PayPal first texted me another one-use-only authorization code. ( Clearly, they understand and use additional verification methods. ) Yet, the service continued to request both SSN and date of birth in order to make the payment. Finally, XXXX put me on hold to consult someone. Apparently this person informed her that, yes, PayPal DOES ask for SSNs as a form of verification in some instances. And, it *might* be bypassed if the PayPal seller sends me an invoice. 

So, I contacted the seller to request an invoice. He sent me one. When I first attempted to pay it using my PayPal account, PayPal AGAIN asked for both SSN and date of birth. Finally, I copied the link into a different browser and was able to check out as a guest.

My complaints are : First, PayPal should never ask for SSNs. It is not a bank, it is a payment service. There are other, effective ways to verify that someone is who they claim to be. Second, PayPal should ALWAYS train their customer service reps to understand when they ask for verification and why and all the possible ways in which they might accomplish verification. Third, PayPal has a reputation for never requesting an SSN, and the reputation is wrong - if they are not going to take steps to abide by their reputation by never asking for SSNs, then they should be truthful in how they represent themselves and never advertise the idea that they do not require SSNs. In fact, I checked PayPal 's terms of service and never ONCE in the document does it state that they may request a SSN. PayPal needs to stop using SSNs, and also to stop deceiving people.

( Note : I understand that PayPal does have an obligation to report certain information to the IRS and for those transactions needs taxpayer ID numbers, which may be SSNs. This situation was NOT that, not according to their own terms of service! )

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation