*UPDATE* It seems that PayPal restored the access to my account, all I have to do is to remove the Donation button. I have make changes to the button and the code so that it is now a “Buy Now” type instead of “Donation” type. But of course, I will never trust PayPal again.
The email as follows:
Your PayPal Account Access Has Been Restored
Dear Lester,
We have restored your account. But you need to replace other PayPal button with Donate Button on your website. Please understand that Donate button is used predominantly to solicit donations for charitable purpose.
To remove a donate button from your website, you will need to delete the button HTML code that you pasted on to your site.
Delete the PayPal text between the following tags:
<form ACTION="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" METHOD="POST">and
</form>Once code has been deleted, the button will no longer appear. We sincerelyapologize for the inconvenience caused you.
Thanks,
PayPal
My PayPal account has been with me since 2001 and all the while it is a personal account which is verified. My account was flagged with some suspicious terrorist activity back in June 2010. I cleared the flag by photocopying my NRIC and my SingTel bill to them.
On 16th September 2010, I received the email below stating my account is limited because of some non-registered charities and non-profit organizations reasons. But the thing is my account is an individual/personal account, what the fuck does it has to do with charities or non-profit organizations.
Notification of Limited Account Access RXI107
Dear Lester,
We appreciate your interest in PayPal. However, due to legal and regulatory constraints, PayPal Private Limited is unable to process payments for non-registered charities and non-profit organizations (NPOs),
political party/organizations, religious institutions, personal/organizational fundraisers, etc. in countries under its jurisdiction. You may refer to the PayPal Private Limited User Agreement
link (https://www.paypal.com/sg/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/ua-outside) to review the list of countries under its jurisdiction.This is not a decision we make lightly, and we deeply regret any inconvenience or frustration this matter may cause you. Please understand that this decision is final.
If you have any questions, you may contact us at apacdd@paypal.com.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
PayPal Compliance Department
PayPal, an eBay Company
Send them an email to ask how to remove the limitation:
Case ID “PP-001-072-431-XXX”
Hi,
My account has been marked as Limited by PayPal (My case ID is “PP-001-072-431-XXX”). And this is the SECOND time PayPal is doing this to me.
The first time, my account was marked as suspicious activity, submitted my NRIC and teleco bill and it was cleared.
This time round I got this “PayPal requires accounts within the charity/non-profit category to provide us with some additional information regarding their organisation”.
How do I go about removing the limitation?
I have been using PayPal since 2001 to collection donations for my WordPress Plugins (https://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/) which I offer for free. With this donations, I used it to buy stuff online, renew my domain, etc. I am not a registered charity/non-profit organisation. Just an individual. I tried upgrading my account to a Business account in the hopes my limitation flag would be clear but unfortunately to no avail.
I am looking forward to your reply.
Thanks a lot.
With Regards,
Lester Chan (gamerz)
https://lesterchan.net
They replied promptly the next day denying my appeal:
PayPal appeal denied
Dear Lester,
Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns.
Based on the email you received, we have determined that it is in our best interests to part ways. This is not a decision we make lightly, and we deeply regret any inconvenience or frustration this may cause you. As previously advised, no further appeals will be allowed on your account, thus the account will remain in its current status. If you would like to conduct personal activities, please open a new account.
We definitely know that you do the right thing for your organization and believe your business is not associated with any financial crime. However, due to legal and regulatory constraints, PayPal Private Limited is unable to process payments for non-registered charities and non-profit organizations (NPOs), personal/organizational fundraisers etc in countries under its jurisdiction. This policy and approach applies to all customers in all countries which contract online with PayPal Private Limited. It is not specific to you, your organization, or your country.
Your balance can be handled in one of two ways:
1. Your remaining account balance can be used to provide refunds to your donors. PayPal offers a way to give donors a full or partial refund for up to 60 days after their payment date. Fees will be returned for this process.
If you cannot provide refunds to your donors via “Issue Refund” option, please log in to your account and contact us with the following information:
1. The transaction date.
2. Donors’ email address.
3. The PayPal Transaction ID of the payments you would like refunded.OR
2. Your remaining account balance will be held in your PayPal account for 180 days from the date your account was limited, in accordance with our User Agreement. After 180 days, any remaining funds will be available for withdrawal.
Please understand that our decision is final, and may not be appealed. You may try to use another payment solution to continue your business.
Again, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused you.
Sincerely,
Nolan
PayPal Compliance Department
PayPal, an eBay Company
On the bright side, at least the money I have in the account is not gone. I just need to wait 180 days before I can withdraw it.
Lastly, A BIG FUCK YOU PAYPAL.
*UPDATE* Looks like Stefan, lead Developer from TortoiseSVN has been fucked by PayPal as well.
*UPDATE 2* Stefan’s PayPal account was restored back as well, same time as me!
Lester,
Looks like Paypal want you to go commercial with your plugins and that they dont want to allow donations!
(am I going crazy but doesn’t paypal itself supply a donation button?)
this is not the way paypal should handle the case. The answers they give are kind of template replies. I am amazed they flag you for terrorist activities. Ha! Definitely something wrong with their business analytic engine!
Stuart: Yeap, I am using the code given by PayPal for the donation!
Andy: Yeap, I think it flag a few of my friends for suspected terrorists activity as well.
I believe this has more to do with Singapore government than paypal alone.
I tried to create a “donate” button from my account. But they told it’s not available due to “local restrictions” but didn’t give me any proper answer
I have donate button since 2001, back then PayPal was still in US! BUT if you look at the signature of the PayPal staff who emailed me
“Consumer advisory- PayPal, Inc., the holder of PayPal’s stored value facility, does not require the approval of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Users are advised to read the terms and conditions carefully.”
What other similar services are available in Singapore?
I don’t think there is any, I will just stick to the old fashion Credit Card
I think you’re talking to an auto-responder at PayPal and they do a lousy job of explaining the issue.
As I said the other day in my email, the problem is that you are asking for donations. “Donate” literally means “to make a tax free donation to an officially (government) recognized charitable organization” – to accept tax free donations you need to be an officially documented non-profit organization with a government provided non-profit ID. You’re dealing with US tax law here. PayPal can’t change the rules. Their only fault here is that they provide a lousy explanation of what’s going on.
Set yourself up another PayPal account. Then code a button for a $1 item for which you can change the quantity (you can buy more than one of the item). This will allow donations of any amount by changing the quantity.
I don’t know if they’ll have a fit if you still say it’s a donation on the page or not (not that they’ll look), but you can always say something like “help support further development of my plugins by buying me a beer or helping to buy additional equipment or whatever if you want. The main thing is not to use the DONATE button.
Hey Bill,
Thanks for the advice =)
Looks like you’ve hit the same predicament as the guy who maintains TortoiseSVN, who lives in Switzerland. It seems to be a Paypal Singapore limitation when it comes to accepting donations.
Thanks scrufus for the link, a good read
Draft Media Release re PayPal
“It is with great sadness that eBay’s Chief Headless Turkey, John Donahoe, announces the probable demise of eBay’s most ugly daughter, PayPal. Donahoe says that PayPal is has been stricken by particularly virulent strains of Visa CyberSource and Mastercard Open Platform, and these afflictions are aggravated by PayPal’s insurmountable lack of direct financial institutions support and a great deal of PayPal user dissatisfaction, particularly with respect to PayPal’s grossly unfair, “all responsibility avoiding” user agreement, totally primitive risk management processes, and grossly unprofessional, usually buyer-biased, fraud-facilitating (indeed, non existent) transactions mediation, to name just a few of the problems that PayPal merchants have to endure.
“Donahoe says that PayPal’s health may therefore be expected to deteriorate and, if ultimately not completely incapacitated, will most likely be eventually confined to its mandatory offering on what little there will be, by then, left of the Donahoe-devastated eBay marketplaces. There is no cure for this condition, and the “eBafia Don” is particularly saddened by the inevitable presumption that it is unlikely that PayPal, will be able to continue to underpin eBay’s sagging bottom line too far into the future.”
Yes, it’s a send-up but, still, it accurately describes PayPal’s most unprofessional and “clunky” operation. The fact is, had the developers of the original “bankcard” concept ever behaved the way PayPal behaves towards its payees in particular, credit/debit cards may never have gotten off the ground, and we would probably still be paying for all our purchases with bits of paper and little metal discs.
A detailed examination of and prognosis for PayPal, (including a link to the “PayPal Horror Tour”) at:
Shill Bidding on eBay: Case Study #4
This latest study provides an indication of eBay’s desperation to mitigate lessening sales activity and very effectively demonstrates eBay’s effective aiding and abetting of criminal shill bidding “wire fraud” activity on unsuspecting buyers:
eBay/PayPal/Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.
Hey I think the donation button is totally bullshit now…i guess anyone related to terrorist(s) or suspected terrorist(s) can screw any paypal donation by donating maybe $1 and screwed ppl’s account ho ho ho.
I feel paypal should simply block terrorist(s)’s paypal account instead of blocking recipient.
If I am in control of paypal, I will give donation recipient to control who they can get donation from
Glad to hear you’ve gotten your PayPal account back.
Like I said, it’s just the bullshit rules we live with because of the US Govt. coupled with PayPal’s crappy explanation of how the rules work.
I think partly is because of SG crappy rules as well!
Honestly, if it wasn’t for the fact that PayPal is a subsidiary of eBay and they should just about be drowning in money (eBay is easily just as dirty an operation), I’d think they just borrowed money. Think about it, if you’re a ‘financial institution’ that isn’t governed by regular financial institution laws (such as … the ethical ones), what would you do when you needed some cash?
Freeze some of your accounts, borrow the money, then reactivate them when you’re done using their money. Maybe one of the execs lost a butt load at the races, or in Vegas, or got robbed by his high priced
hookermistressladyfriend. You probably just kept the mob from wacking him. 😀That is quite true if you come to think of it and there is nothing you can do about it. And they “have the right” to freeze it for 6 months (180 days) before you are allowed to withdraw that money!
Yes, you are very much right, you cannot open a PayPal account for Charity, if your charity is registered in India, same thing happened with me also, I applied a Charity account for my client and after completing all the formalities they just denied for the account.
I have a suggestion for you, apply for a normal account with some other website and then use it for your Charity website, I have list of websites who are doing the same thing.
You can also try some other Payment Gateways like CCavenue, but in case you are using Vbulletin script, I don’t think so that it may help you. The first suggestion may work for you.
My account was set to limited once without informing me beforehand. I only discovered it when I need to use Paypal to pay for my domain renewal. And mind you, the stupid process isn’t that easy and is very slow. In the end, I have to borrow my friend’s Paypal account to pay for my domain renewal.
I’m not going to use Paypal anymore UNLESS there is no other option. And come on, all good online shop should have more than 1 method of payment.