Consumer complaint received 2021-04-06
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Managing, opening, or closing your mobile wallet account — 
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc (NY)

On XX/XX/2021, I received a large payment into my PayPal account. The payment was from the sale of a boat that I sold at auction on XXXX. Because it was a large payment, I understand why PayPal flagged it as potentially suspicious. As a result, PayPal froze my account and the funds I received are unavailable. In response to PayPal 's request, I provided a scan of my US passport, an explanation of each recent transaction on my account, and other information that should be reasonably sufficient to close the matter and determine that the potentially suspicious activity they identified was not actually suspicious. My complaint is that while I understand that AML and fraud controls are necessary, PayPal regularly exceeds what I think is reasonably required to identify and address actual suspicious behavior or transactions. In this case, I was selling personal property to help in a difficult financial time for me. I am a regular consumer. I am also a bank compliance officer, so I understand the need to scrutinize all transactions. But PayPal has now frozen my funds for what they promise could be 21 days or more. This causes real consumer harm. I am just selling some personal items on ebay to help pay the bills. I am a 20 year member of ebay with 100 % positive feedback. I live in upstate new york. I work at a bank as a compliance officer. I am not a high risk customer. Yet, in this case and in nearly every one of the recent transactions I have performed with XXXX, my account is frozen and I am told I may have to wait 21 days for funds to be made available. This is tangible consumer harm. In the midst of a pandemic, I am being prevented from the ability to pay my mortgage because PayPal has not sufficiently tuned its transaction monitoring scenarios to properly measure risk. I also do not think it is fair to charge a large fee for a transaction when a consumer is made to go through this kind of investigatory pain. Other than one large payment, there is no basis on which to conclude there is any illegal or even potentially suspicious activity occurring here. I would like access to my money so that I can pay my mortgage. I would like to be able to sell my collectibles and other items on ebay to help pay my bills without having to suffer through a battle with PayPal every time I get XXXX from an ebay sale. The ebay transactions are easily verifiable, yet this happens again and again and again with PayPal. This is substantial consumer harm. As well, PayPal asks that I prove that the items I sold were delivered. It ties this to other transactions unrelated to the one that triggered this alert. Therefore, I am asked to prove delivery of 3 items that are all to be picked up locally and that have no shipping or tracking numbers. The position PayPal puts consumers like me in is unfair, it's abusive/repetitive, and causes ongoing harm to consumers. A strong compliance program is tailored to risk and this issue is evidence that PayPal is not properly targeting its transaction monitoring to the risks presented. It also is evidence that PayPal does not have the appropriate staff resources to resolve these investigations in a timely way that mitigates any harm to the consumer.