Last updated on 10 October 2024
Last updated on 10 October 2024
These are the terms and conditions of the contract between you and PayPal UK Ltd (“PayPal”) governing your use of your PayPal account and the PayPal services, which we call our user agreement. It applies only to PayPal accounts of residents of the United Kingdom (UK), Guernsey, Isle of Man and Jersey. This user agreement does not apply to your use of PayPal's Xoom service, which is separately governed by the Xoom Legal Agreements.
If you are an individual, you must be at least 18 years old and have full legal capacity to enter into a contract to open a PayPal account and use the PayPal services. If you are a business, the business must be registered in one of the above countries or territories.
To use the PayPal services you need to open a PayPal account. By opening and using a PayPal account, you agree to comply with all of the terms and conditions in this user agreement, which will be valid until terminated. You also agree to comply with the following additional documents and each of the other documents on the Legal Agreements page that apply to you:
Please read carefully all of the terms and conditions of this user agreement and each of the other documents that apply to you.
We may revise this user agreement and any of the documents listed above from time to time.
We may change the terms of this user agreement and other documents listed above for several reasons including:
Whenever we make a change to these terms that impacts our contractual relationship with you or the nature of the services we provide to you we will notify you. This means we will not notify you of editorial or clarificatory changes.
We will post information on the Policy Updates page of our website and provide notice of at least two months of the changes. By continuing to use our services after any changes to this user agreement take effect, you will be deemed to have accepted the changes. If you do not agree to the proposed changes and do not wish to continue to use the PayPal services under the revised terms, you have the option to close your account. See Closing Your PayPal Account section for further information on closing your account.
Our services are provided by PayPal UK Ltd to UK account holders. For details on how to reach PayPal, please refer to this page on Customer Service.
PayPal UK Ltd is a company incorporated under the laws of England and Wales with company number 14741686 and its registered office address is Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH.
PayPal UK Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an electronic money institution under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 for the issuance of electronic money (firm reference number 994790), in relation to its regulated consumer credit activities under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (firm reference number 996405) and for the provision of Cryptocurrency services under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (firm reference number 1000741). Some of PayPal UK Ltd’s products including PayPal Pay in 3 and PayPal Working Capital are not regulated by the FCA.
PayPal’s main business is the issuance of electronic money and the provision of payment services using that electronic money. Through our services you may make online and in-store payments, donations, and send, request and receive electronic money. PayPal also provides other financial and related services which can be found on the Legal Agreements page for PayPal services. These services are collectively referred to as the services.
This user agreement, together with other legal terms and legally required disclosures relating to your use of our services will be made available to you at all times on the PayPal website (typically located on the “Legal Agreements” page). We may also send this information to you.
You may request a copy of any legally required disclosures (including this user agreement) from us and we will provide this to you in a form which allows you to store and reproduce the information (for example, by e-mail).
To use our service, you will need access to a smartphone and computer, or tablet and have an internet connection.
We offer two types of accounts: personal accounts and business accounts. To open an account with us, you must:
As part of our sign-up process, you must:
With a personal account you can send and request money from friends and family and pay online for purchases.
Holders of certain existing personal accounts may be required to upgrade their accounts (which may include providing further information to PayPal) to be able to use all of the current functionality available in a personal account.
To use your PayPal account primarily to sell things, you must open a business account or convert your personal account to a business account.
When you sell a good or service to a buyer, you will be considered a seller and the provisions of this user agreement that apply to sellers will apply to you.
In this user agreement, references to a consumer mean an individual acting for purposes other than a trade, business or profession.
Business accounts are for people and organisations (whether incorporated or not) that primarily use PayPal to receive online payments for sales or donations. Business accounts are not eligible to receive “personal transactions”.
Business accounts may be subject to fees that differ from the fees applicable to personal accounts. See our Fees for further details.
By opening a business account or converting a personal account to a business account, you certify to us that you are using it primarily for a business or commercial purpose.
Where you are a seller, if the activity through any type of PayPal account you hold reaches certain thresholds or involves certain business segments or activities, you are required by the card networks to agree to Commercial Entity Agreements directly with our processing partners to allow you to continue accepting card-funded payments. In this case, these Commercial Entity Agreements will apply to any payment processed by PayPal on your behalf in addition to this user agreement.
You should take reasonable steps to stop your PayPal account being misused. You must maintain adequate security and control of any and all devices, items, IDs, passwords and personal identification numbers / codes that you use to access your PayPal account and the PayPal services. You must comply with all reasonable instructions we may issue regarding how you keep these devices, items and information safe.
You must comply with all reasonable instructions we may issue regarding how you can keep your payment instrument safe.
We may require you to authenticate any instruction relating to your account (i.e. give us the information that we need to be sure that it's you giving us the instruction, such as submitting your correct log-in information – this could include your e-mail address and password) and otherwise successfully log into your PayPal account to provide to us your instruction.
You must keep your postal address, email address, phone number of a phone to which you are the primary user and other contact information current in your PayPal account profile.
You may expressly grant, remove and manage permissions for some third parties to take certain actions on your behalf. In some cases you can do this when logged into your account – in other cases you can do this directly with the third party. You acknowledge that if you grant permission for a third party to take actions on your behalf, we may disclose certain information about your account to this third party.
You may permit third party service providers licensed by applicable law to:
Granting permission to any third party to access your account in any way does not relieve you of any of your responsibilities under this user agreement. You are liable to us for the actions that you authorise the third parties to carry out. Except where we are liable for incorrectly executed or unauthorised transactions as set out in this user agreement, you will not hold us responsible for, and you will be liable for any actions or inactions arising out of such third parties in connection with the permissions you granted, subject to your mandatory legal rights.
You can close your account at any time. See the PayPal Help Centre for how to do this.
There may be circumstances where we do not allow you to close your account immediately, this includes where there are limitations or unresolved issues on your account or where your account balance reflects an amount that you owe us. If there are funds in your account, you will need to withdraw these before you can close your account.
We may close your account at our convenience by providing you with two months’ prior notice.
We may also need to close your account at any time immediately and without notice if:
We may also close your account if you don't access it for three years. We will try to give you notice in these circumstances, but we may not be able to do so.
Where we decide to close your account, we will provide you with notice of account closure and where practicable, the reasons for closing your account, together with the ability to withdraw any undisputed funds that we are holding.
When your account is closed:
In the event that we decide to discontinue any of our services or any portion or feature of our services for any reason, we will give you at least two months’ (but no less than 60 days) prior notice before discontinuing the service or feature, unless we determine in good faith that:
If you are a consumer, you have the right to withdraw from the User Agreement without giving any reason and without penalty within 14 days of your account being opened. To do so, you must, within these 14 days, follow the process to close your account which will end the User Agreement. PayPal thinks consumers should have the choice to use our services or not so we don’t lock you into a contract. This is why, in addition to these mandatory rights, even after 14 days, you can end your agreement by closing your account. By making use of our services during the 14-day withdrawal period you require our services to be provided before the end of the 14-day right of withdrawal period. You will have to pay fees for the services you used (including during the 14-day withdrawal period) up until you close your account and withdraw your balance, if any. All pending transactions will be cancelled when you close your account. See the section “Closing your PayPal account” in the User Agreement for more details.
All money in your account is legally termed “electronic money”, which is a form of money suitable for use online.
You can use a funding source as a way to pay us to obtain electronic money in your account or to receive withdrawals from your account, as further outlined in this user agreement (see in particular Adding or Withdrawing Money and Funding your Payment.
You can link or unlink a credit card, debit card, a prepaid card (where available) a bank account or PayPal Credit (where available) to your PayPal account as a funding source.
We may limit the availability of your funding sources to manage our risk.
Please keep your funding source information current (e.g. credit card number and expiration date). If this information changes, we may update it using information and third-party sources available to us without any action on your part. If you do not want us to update your card information, you may contact your issuer to request this or remove your funding source from your PayPal account. If we update your funding source, we will keep any preference setting attached to that funding source. You may choose to confirm your card or bank account, so that we can verify that the card or bank account is valid and that you are its owner. We may allow you to do this by following the “Link and Confirm Card” process (for cards) or the “Bank Confirmation” process (for bank accounts) or other processes which we may notify to you or which we may publish from time to time.
By linking a funding source to your PayPal account, you give us continuous permission to automatically charge that funding source (subject to this user agreement and the terms of any mandate (e.g. bank direct debit) used by the provider of that funding source to set up and maintain that authority) for the required value of the electronic money:
We may charge the funding source again if the previous attempt failed. If you cancel any continuous permission from your funding source, you will reimburse us for the value of any electronic money we've already issued for which a charge from that funding source remains outstanding.
You can stop the permission by unlinking the funding source from your PayPal account by clicking here. Until the funding source has been unlinked, the permission will continue to apply.
In this section, we use the term “PayPal” to refer to us (PayPal UK Ltd) and our affiliates authorised to act on our behalf.
When we receive a payment from your funding source we may store the resulting electronic money in your reserve account for as long as we have reason to believe that there is risk of reversal by the funding source provider. This is because we do not have all the information necessary to place the funds from your payment at your disposal in your PayPal balance while there is such a risk of reversal.
When you instruct us to make a payment from your account to another user funded by a payment from your bank account and we store the resulting electronic money in this way, we call this type of payment from your bank account an “eCheque” payment. See Funding payments you send from your account below for how we use eCheques.
You will not receive interest or any other earnings on the money in your account. This is because the money in your account is electronic money and applicable laws forbid paying interest on electronic money. Your PayPal account is an electronic money account and is not a bank account. The electronic money in your PayPal account is not covered by the UK’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
We may store and move the money in your account in and between:
at any given time, subject further to this user agreement.
When we receive a payment from or to you, for your PayPal account, we issue an equivalent amount of electronic money to your account. The UK Electronic Money Regulations 2011 imposes requirements on us about how we hold these funds/payments. When we receive these funds/payments, we consider them “Relevant Funds”. We segregate these Relevant Funds from any of our own money in bank accounts known as segregated bank accounts that are held with an authorised credit institution. If we continue to hold the Relevant Funds at the end of the business day following the day on which we received the Relevant Funds, we will deposit these into a separate safeguarding bank account that are held with an authorised credit institution. This process of protecting relevant funds is referred to as safeguarding.
We keep safeguarding your Relevant Funds until you pay them out of your PayPal account. This happens, for example, when you make payments to a third party from your PayPal account or withdraw your PayPal balance.
If we were to become insolvent, the Relevant Funds that we hold for you and our other users in our segregated and/or safeguarded bank accounts will form a separate asset pool. This means that, after the costs of insolvency, the insolvency practitioner or administrator appointed to deal with the insolvency will be entitled to use the funds in the asset pool to reimburse you any monies owing, before any other creditors of PayPal.
Nothing in this provision stops us from deducting fees that we are entitled to collect under this User Agreement and any fees do not form part of the protected asset pool.
Your account contains your PayPal balance, which is the balance of money available for payments or withdrawals.
When you use our payment service to pay another user, you instruct us to transfer the money from your PayPal balance to the recipient’s account.
You need to have enough PayPal balance in cleared funds to cover the amount of any payment you make and the transaction fees you owe us at the time of the payment. Other requirements also apply – see the section Making a Payment below. If you have insufficient PayPal balance or have chosen a preferred funding source you are also requesting us to obtain funds on your behalf from your applicable funding source and issue electronic money to your PayPal balance for your payment to be made. This means that we will use your preferred funding source by taking payment from that funding source to fund your balance and then we will make the payments that you have requested.
When you withdraw your money you need to have enough PayPal balance to cover the value of any withdrawal at the time of the withdrawal.
See Adding or Withdrawing Money to know how to get a PayPal balance and how to withdraw it.
If your PayPal balance shows a negative amount, this is the net amount you owe to us at the given time.
Money marked in your account overview as “pending”, “uncleared”, “held” or otherwise restricted or limited at any given time is held in the part of your account which acts as a reserve account. You cannot access and use money stored in the reserve account.
To get electronic money into your account you can, subject further to this user agreement:
You can obtain electronic money from us by:
The execution of any payment to us from your funding source provider is your funding source provider's legal responsibility. We have no control over how long the payment to us will take.
If you have a PayPal balance, you may withdraw any amount by transferring it to your nominated funding source linked to your PayPal account, as we may allow from time to time. This could include your bank account or debit or credit card, depending on the country in which your PayPal account is registered.
When you instruct us to withdraw any amount of your PayPal balance, subject further to this user agreement we will:
We aim to send the withdrawal payment instruction to our bank by the end of the next Business Day (“Business Day” means a day on which banks in the UK are open to the general public). If there are no other delays subject to this user agreement. Once our bank receives our payment instruction, we have no control over how long the payment to you will take to complete. At this point, our bank, your funding source provider and the payment systems that they rely on take over responsibility for getting the money to your nominated funding source and this can affect the time it takes for you to receive your money. We may allow you to withdraw the money by transferring the money to:
Fees apply to withdrawals. We will also disclose to you the fees in advance each time you initiate such a withdrawal.
The funding source (for example, bank account or card) into which you request the withdrawal must be denominated in the original opening currency of your account or another currency that PayPal supports for withdrawals in your country of residence.
You may only withdraw PayPal balance in the opening currency of your account, unless we agree otherwise. In order to withdraw PayPal balance held in another currency you will have to convert the currency to the opening currency of your account, or it will be converted for you at the time of your withdrawal. Our transaction exchange rate will be used.
This means that if you withdraw:
Your issuer may also charge you if a currency conversion to the currency your card is issued in, is required.
If you have a business account, this transactions exchange rate will not apply. Instead, you will pay a currency conversion fee applied on an external base exchange rate as described on the Fees Page (see also the "How We Convert Currency" section).
To protect you, our other users and us from loss and to allow us to comply with our anti-money laundering and other legal obligations, we may delay a withdrawal, in certain situations, including if we need to confirm that you have authorised the withdrawal or if payments to your PayPal account have been subject to a reversal (for example, as a result of a chargeback, bank reversal or dispute by a buyer). If we place a limitation on your PayPal account, a payment is subject to a hold, or your account or an associated account has a negative balance in any currency while a withdrawal from your PayPal account is pending, you will have to reinitiate the withdrawal once the limitation or hold has been lifted, or negative balance is fully paid off.
We may set limits on your withdrawals, and you can view any withdrawal limit by logging into your PayPal account. You must follow the steps that we will notify to you or publish from time to time (which we may set out in your account overview) to lift your withdrawal limit.
When you open your account, it is configured for use with the opening currency of your account.
The opening currency of your account is pounds sterling (GBP).
You may set the currency on your card.
We may configure your account further so that you can use it to store money and send and receive payments in currencies other than the opening currency of your account. If you hold a PayPal balance, we may allow you to convert it to balance in another currency.
If your PayPal balance is not enough to cover the amount of a payment you instruct us to make in a particular currency, we may perform a currency conversion from any PayPal balance in another currency to cover the shortfall. There may be some restrictions on where you can send payments in certain currencies.
We may allow you to choose the way in which your account treats and/or converts payments received in currencies other than the opening currency of your account. To receive money in a currency other than the opening currency of your account, it may be necessary to create a balance in that currency or convert the money into another currency that we allow you to hold.
Payments in certain currencies can only be received by automatic conversion of the money into another currency that we allow you to hold.
If you receive a payment from anyone who doesn't have a PayPal account and that payment is in a currency which your account is not currently configured to use, we may automatically convert the amount received into a currency that your account is configured to use at the time the payment is made.
Please see the Withdrawing Money section above to see how withdrawals in different currencies can be made.
If one of the currency balances in your account shows that you owe us an amount of funds for any reason, we may set off the amount you owe us by using funds you maintain in a different currency balance or by deducting amounts you owe us from money you receive into your account, or money you attempt to withdraw or send from your account, or in a different account, and by deducting funds from any withdrawals you attempt to make. If, for a period of 21 days, you have a PayPal balance that reflects an amount owing to us that is not in the opening currency of your account, we may convert the amount you owe us to that opening currency.
We may, at our discretion, impose limits on the amount of money you can convert or the number of conversions you can perform. You are responsible for all risks associated with maintaining multiple currencies in a PayPal account. You may not manage or convert currencies for speculative trading purposes, conversion arbitrage, conversion options, or any other activity that we determine is primarily for the purpose of gaining or making money based on currency conversion rates. We may hold, cancel, or reverse any transaction we determine to violate this policy.
Other than as set out below and on the Fees Page, if PayPal converts currency, it will be completed at the transaction exchange rate we set for the relevant currency exchange.
The transaction exchange rate is adjusted regularly, typically between 5pm and 7pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) (in New York City, USA) on every Business Day and those changes will be applied immediately.
You can access a "Currency Converter" tool to see what transaction exchange rate may apply for certain currency conversions. Any rates shown using the Currency Converter tool indicate the applicable rates at the time you use the tool and are subject to change. Subject to other provisions of the user agreement, when you complete a transaction, the transaction exchange rate applying to the transaction will be shown to you so you can decide to make your payment at that rate or not. In certain circumstances, that transaction exchange rate may apply to the payment for the transaction whenever it is processed; or that rate may be valid only if transaction is processed by the seller within a limited time, as stated prior to the initiation of the transaction. After that limited time, we may use the transaction exchange rate in effect at the time the transaction is processed by the seller, or not perform the currency conversion.
If you have authorized a payment under a billing agreement, or if we cannot communicate with you at the time when you authorize an in-person payment (for example because you or the seller does not have connectivity at that time) and we perform a currency conversion for that payment, we will use the transaction exchange rate in effect at the time the payment transaction is processed by the seller. Therefore, the transaction exchange rate for each payment under a billing agreement or where we haven’t been able to communicate with you at the time when you authorize an in-person payment may vary.
Holds or limitations may delay currency conversion of amounts until such holds or limitations are released. This may result in the application of a currency conversion that is different from the transaction exchange rate that would have been applied had no account hold(s) or limitation(s) been in place. Currency conversions in these circumstances may be more favourable or less favourable to you.
When your payment is funded by a debit or credit card and PayPal determines currency conversion is necessary, you consent to and authorise us to convert the currency in place of your debit or credit card issuer. This means that we will convert the currency at our rate and a different rate could be applied than if your card issuer had carried out the conversion.
You may have the right to have your card issuer convert the currency of the card payment into the currency in which you send the payment from your PayPal account, if applicable for that card issuer and network. This selection may be presented to you in various forms, including setting the currency of your card, a choice of which currency is used for the transaction, whether we or your card issuer performs the conversion, or which conversion rate is used for the transaction, among others. If your card issuer converts the currency, your card issuer will determine the currency conversion rate and what fees they may charge.
PayPal will always perform the conversion for transactions where you use existing balance or your linked bank account is the funding source.
If PayPal determines currency conversion is necessary for a transaction that also requires a backup funding source to be chosen, you may not be able to separately choose whether PayPal or your card issuer performs the currency conversion on the payment from your backup funding source.
Where a currency conversion is offered at the point of sale by the merchant, not by PayPal, and you choose to authorise the payment transaction on the basis of the merchant's exchange rate and charges, PayPal has no liability to you for that currency conversion.
Our consumer fees and merchant fees are exclusive of any taxes, charges, or similar assessments of any nature, including, without limitation, value-added, sales, digital services, stamp, transfer, or withholding taxes, assessable by any jurisdiction or governmental authority (collectively, “Taxes”).
Each of us shall be responsible to pay our own Taxes arising in connection with the performance of our respective obligations from your use of PayPal services.
If you are paying for a PayPal service, you agree to pay to PayPal the amount of any legally applicable Taxes imposed on any amount due from you to PayPal.
You agree not to withhold any Taxes on amounts payable by you to PayPal unless you are legally required to do so. If you withhold any Taxes, the amount payable by you to PayPal shall not be decreased by the amount withheld. You agree that PayPal is entitled to receive the full amount that would have been received had there been no withholding of any Taxes. Upon request by PayPal, you will deliver to PayPal in a timely manner any written documentation evidencing your payment of Taxes to the relevant authorities.
It is your responsibility to determine what, if any, Taxes apply to the payments you make or receive, and it is solely your responsibility to assess, collect, report, and remit the correct Taxes to the appropriate authority. PayPal is not responsible for determining whether any Taxes apply to your transaction or for calculating, collecting, reporting, or remitting Taxes arising from any transaction.
You acknowledge that PayPal may have a legal obligation to make reports, and will make such reports, to tax authorities regarding transactions that we process on your behalf. Additional information can be found in our Help Centre.
We may request that you provide PayPal with your tax identification number and/or other tax-related documentation or information. If you do not provide the requested information to PayPal or keep documentation up to date in your PayPal account, you may be subject to account holds or limitations and withholding Taxes at the applicable rates on gross payments received. PayPal will remit any such withholding Taxes to the appropriate tax authorities, and you acknowledge PayPal may be prohibited from refunding any amounts to you once these have been sent to the appropriate tax authorities.
If a currency conversion is required on a payment of withholding Taxes, the amount due to the relevant tax authority will be calculated by PayPal in accordance with our currency conversion terms when we process the withholding Taxes. To minimise risks relating to exchange rate fluctuations, account holds and limitations, tax withholding, and remittance to the relevant tax authority, you should add or confirm your taxpayer information to PayPal.
Unless your account is restricted you may view and download your PayPal account statement by logging into your PayPal account. You agree to review your transactions through your PayPal account history instead of receiving periodic statements by email.
You will receive important information about your payments and payment receipts by e-mail immediately after a transaction. Your transaction history will also be updated and made available to you at any time by logging into your account. You can also access a downloadable report from your PayPal account. This will show all fees incurred and any other amounts charged to your PayPal account in the relevant period. The report will only be updated and made available if there has been any activity on your PayPal account or any fees have been incurred in the relevant period. The way in which we provide the transaction information will allow you to store and reproduce the information unchanged, for example by printing a copy.
We reserve the right to charge a fee for providing you with additional information or for providing the transaction history and other information about fees in a different way but we won’t charge you for records requested in connection with your good-faith assertion of an error in your PayPal account.
We charge fees for our services as set out on the fees page relating to the country in which you are registered with us as resident.
You are liable for telephone charges and any charges made by your internet service provider or similar or associated charges as a result of the use by you of our services.
We may deduct our fees from your PayPal balance. We may deduct our transaction-related fees from the amounts we transfer before those funds are credited to your PayPal balance.
We will provide you with the details of the amounts you receive and our fees charged either by e-mail or in your transaction history (which you can access by logging into your account).
If your payment requires you to pay a fee to us, we will (subject to the rest of the user agreement) disclose that fee to you when you provide your payment instruction to us.
You cannot set off or deduct any amounts from our fees.
We may make a charge for any additional services we provide outside this user agreement. We will tell you of those charges when you ask for the service.
We may allow you to provide your payment instruction to us in any way which we may notify to you from time to time. The way in which you provide your payment instruction can depend on the type of payment you are making – for example:
We may require you to authenticate your payment instruction (i.e. give us the information that we need to be sure that it's you giving us the instruction, such as submitting your correct log-in information – this could include your e-mail address and password) and otherwise successfully log into your PayPal account to provide to us your payment instruction.
We may offer you to select certain recipients for a faster payment experience, which makes them a "trusted beneficiary" for your future payments made to that recipient. We will not normally ask you to log in (with password, PIN or similar) for these payments when they are made. You can access and edit your list of trusted beneficiaries in your PayPal account at any time.
Once you provide your payment instruction to us, you may not cancel it, except if it is a payment instruction under a billing agreement (see below for more details).
Your payment to another user will leave your account within the Business Day after we receive your complete payment instruction. A payment instruction is deemed to be received by us when the complete data required for execution of the transaction reaches us.
The payment will leave your account within two Business Days if we receive your complete payment instruction:
We may allow you to ask us to make your payment on a specific later date, in which case your payment will leave your account on that later date.
Other provisions in this user agreement may cause the above timeframes to be extended.
We may treat your payment instruction as not complete and we may refuse to make your payment if:
If we allow you to send a payment to someone who does not have a PayPal account, the recipient can claim the money by opening a PayPal account.
If the recipient already has a PayPal account, they can refuse to accept the money.
If the recipient refuses to accept the money or doesn't open a PayPal account and claim the money within 30 days after the date it is sent, the money (including any fees you were charged) will be refunded to your PayPal account. See Refunds to your account for what can happen when your PayPal account receives a refund.
We may, at our discretion, impose limits on the amount and value of payments you can make, including money you send for purchases. You can view any sending limit by logging into your PayPal account. To lift your sending limit, you must follow the steps that we will notify to you or publish from time to time (which we may set out in your account overview).
When you pay certain sellers or pay for certain purchases (for instance, purchases which have to be shipped to you or may be updated and finalised by the seller), you are providing:
Your authorisation will typically remain valid for up to 30 days, but may remain valid for longer. If you have balance, we may hold the payment amount as pending until the seller collects your payment. If your payment requires a currency conversion by us, the transaction exchange rate will be determined and applied (as described in the Currency Conversion section) at the time the payment is processed.
Your authorisation allows the seller to update the payment amount before the seller collects the payment (to account for any changes to the purchase that you may agree with the seller, such as additional Taxes, shipping or postage charges or discounts). We are not required to verify any changes at any time (including at the time the payment is transferred). We may transfer any amount on the basis of your authorisation and upon receiving instructions from the seller of the final payment amount.
You can use a billing agreement to manage payments to the same recipient(s) on an ongoing automatic basis. When you enter into a billing agreement:
This makes the recipient a “trusted beneficiary” of all your payments made to that recipient, so we will not normally ask you to log in (with password, PIN or similar) to approve these subsequent payments when they are made.
Payments made under the billing agreement may be in variable amounts and may be made on various dates. We are only a payment service provider so we can’t (and please don’t expect us to) know what you have or haven’t agreed with the recipient or to know why the recipient decided to collect your payment. We are not obliged to verify or confirm the amount the recipient presents to us for the purpose of processing payments made under the billing agreement.
We use several names for payments that can be managed by a billing agreement – these include “automatic payments,” "subscription payments" "recurring payments” “reference transactions” "preauthorised transfers" or "preapproved payment."
You can cancel your billing agreement at any time in your account interface or by contacting us. Where a payment under that billing agreement is scheduled to be made before the end of the next Business Day after you tell us to cancel it, we may cancel your billing agreement after that payment has been made. If you cancel a billing agreement, you may still owe the recipient money for goods or services that you have received but have not paid for.
If we determine currency conversion is necessary for a billing agreement payment, and we perform the conversion, we will use the transaction exchange rate in effect at the time the payment is processed. The transaction exchange rate for each payment transaction may vary.
We may allow the recipient of your payment to:
We will return the amount of any refused payment or refunded payment to your balance. We will return the amount of an unclaimed payment to your balance within 30 days after the date you initiated the payment. If any amount of any payment is returned to you in any of the ways outlined above, we may convert the returned amount for you into either:
If the original payment you sent involved a currency conversion we will convert the returned amount from the currency received by the recipient as follows:
The transaction exchange rate may be applied immediately and without notice to you.
We may also automatically withdraw the returned amount from your Balance and transfer the funds back to the funding source you used for the original payment. Withdrawals can also involve a currency conversion – see the section on Withdrawing money above.
The returned amount could be lower in value than your original payment amount. This can happen as a result of:
PayPal is not responsible for any loss resulting from the recipient's decision to refuse or refund your payment, except to the extent that a refund sent by the recipient is a payment executed incorrectly by PayPal.
We are not liable to you for the difference between the value of your original payment and the value of the resulting refund, except to the extent that the refund is an incorrect payment (see the section on Resolving Problems).
You may select a preferred funding source when logged into your account. Subject to this user agreement, the preferred funding source will be used as the default funding source for payments you send from your account.
You can set separate preferred funding sources for some billing agreement payments.
Some payments can be funded by special funding arrangements linked to your PayPal account, such as merchant/transaction specific balance, gift vouchers or other promotional funding arrangements. The use and priority of these special funding arrangements are subject to further terms and conditions between you and us. Your account overview may show the notional amount available in your special funding arrangements to fund qualifying payments at any given time. This amount does not constitute electronic money, is not deemed part of your PayPal balance and is not redeemable in cash - it only represents the amount of electronic money which we offer to issue and credit to your account at the time of (and only to immediately fund) a qualifying payment, subject to (and only for the period outlined in) the further terms and conditions of use of that special funding arrangement. If your payment funded by a special funding arrangement is reversed at a later time for any reason, we will keep the amount that represents the portion of that payment that was funded by your special funding arrangement and (provided that the special funding arrangement has not already expired) reinstate the special funding arrangement.
PayPal may allow you to redeem rewards associated with your eligible card(s) when making a purchase with your PayPal account through PayPal's Pay with Rewards program. PayPal may share with and receive information from your card issuer about your account(s) to complete the redemption of your rewards when using PayPal's Pay with Rewards program. The exchange of this information is necessary to complete the purchase when you select the Pay with Rewards redemption option.
All Pay with Rewards redemptions are subject to the terms of your card agreement with your card issuer. Pay with Rewards is only available for eligible purchases with certain merchants, and PayPal or your card issuer may limit, suspend, or terminate your ability to redeem rewards at any time in accordance with this user agreement, and/or your card agreement and reward program terms. Your card issuer determines the value of rewards redeemed through PayPal and available redemption methods (e.g., to pay for your purchase or for a statement credit).
There may be a delay between checkout with Pay with Rewards and processing of your payment. Only rewards available upon processing of your payment will be used. Because your reward balance and/or transaction balance may change, whenever you request to redeem rewards for a purchase you also authorise PayPal to charge up to the full payment amount to your associated card if that happens.
Cancellations and refunds are subject to your merchant's cancellation and refund policy. PayPal may cancel your transaction as outlined in this user agreement. If your transaction is cancelled or you return your purchase, your refund will be processed back as a GBP amount; depending on your card agreement and reward program terms with your card issuer, your card issuer may or may not credit your purchase back to your reward balance. If you split your payment between your reward balance and another payment method, PayPal and/or your card issuer will choose the order and split of funds when processing a cancellation or refund. Each card issuer may treat chargebacks for purchases involving rewards redemption differently, please check with your card issuer for more information.
If your card information changes (including if it is reissued with a new account number), you may need to update your PayPal wallet and re-enroll your card to continue using rewards.
We will obtain electronic money for the payment you send from your account from the following sources in the following order to the extent they are available:
When you buy something from a seller who accepts PayPal, you may be eligible for a refund under PayPal’s Buyer Protection program. You may have other rights against a seller, including, for example, statutory rights to returns or repairs. If an issue arises with a seller you must try to resolve your issue directly with the seller before filing a claim under the Buyer Protection Program. If you are unable to resolve the issue you will need to decide whether to make a claim under the Buyer Protection Program or under your statutory rights, including any rights afforded to you by your card issuer. You cannot make a claim under your rights afforded to you by your card issuer or any other statutory rights and the Buyer Protection Program. In making your decision, you should consider whether using your other rights against the seller under your card agreement may put you in a better position than under this Program. When applicable, PayPal’s Buyer Protection program entitles you to reimbursement for the full purchase price of the item plus the original shipping costs you paid, if any. PayPal determines, in its sole discretion, whether your claim is eligible for PayPal’s Buyer Protection program. The eligibility criteria for PayPal's Buyer Protection program are set out in our Buyer Protection Policy. You may be able to file an appeal of the decision with PayPal if you have new or compelling information not available at the time of the original determination or you believe there was an error in the decision-making process.
The program terms and conditions are set out in PayPal’s Buyer Protection program page and form part of this user agreement.
PayPal may allow anybody (with or without an account) to make a payment instruction resulting in the issuance or transfer of electronic money to your account.
If you are a seller, by integrating (including by having already integrated) into your online checkout/platform any functionality intended to enable a payer without a PayPal account to send a payment to your PayPal account, you agree to all further terms of use of that functionality which PayPal will make available to you on any page on the PayPal or Braintree website (including any page for developers and our Legal Agreements page) or online platform. Such further terms include the PayPal Alternative Payment Methods Agreement.
The receipt of a payment into your account does not equate to the receipt of cleared funds. A notification that a payment has been sent to you does not amount to a receipt of electronic money in your account unless you have accepted the payment.
We may allow you to accept payments in any currency supported by our service from time to time.
Where you (instead of PayPal) offer the payer at the point of sale a currency conversion of an amount you receive through PayPal, you will inform the buyer of the exchange rate and any charges that will be applied to the payment transaction. PayPal has no liability to any buyer if you fail to inform the buyer of the exchange rate and charges. You acknowledge that if you fail to disclose the exchange rate and charges to the buyer this may constitute a criminal offence by you.
Any payment sent to you may be subject to a reversal, payment review, limitation, reserve or hold as allowed under this user agreement.
We may, at our discretion, impose limits on the amount and value of payments you can receive, including money you receive for purchases. To lift your receiving limit, you must follow the steps that we will notify to you or publish from time to time (which we may set out in your account overview).
If you are a seller, this section applies.
Our checkout solution consists of:
We may offer you all, any part or any combination of parts of the checkout solution. If we offer you the checkout solution and you choose to use it, in addition to this user agreement, you agree to the following further terms relating to the following capabilities:
If you are a seller, this section applies.
PayPal does not encourage surcharging (i.e. charging for use of specific payment methods) because it is a commercial practice that can penalise the consumer and create unnecessary confusion, friction and abandonment at checkout.
You shall not surcharge for the use of our services. In the UK, surcharging in relation to our services is strictly limited by law and you should ensure that you understand the rules before considering this practice.
If, notwithstanding the above, you surcharge a buyer, you, and not we, will inform the buyer of the requested charge. We are not liable to any buyer where you have failed to inform the buyer of any surcharge.
If you are a seller, this section applies.
You must treat PayPal as a payment method or mark at least on par with any other payment methods offered at your points of sale, including your websites or mobile applications. This includes at least equal or substantially similar:
In representations to your customers or in public communications, you must not mischaracterise any PayPal service as a payment method or exhibit a preference for other payment methods over any PayPal service.
If you are a seller you must, if required under applicable law, publish a refunds and return policy, as well as a privacy policy.
If you are a seller, this section applies.
If you accept PayPal payments at your physical store, you must communicate the total amount of transaction to the customer before it takes place. You may charge your customer's account only for transactions that they have authorised. You must also provide customers with a physical receipt if they request one. You agree that any transaction that you make shall have an accurate and true description of the goods and services being purchased.
If you use a QR code to accept payments in your physical store, you must use a QR code intended for goods and services transactions. You must also not use QR codes for in-person transactions as a method of accepting payment for goods and services transactions occurring online. For any buyer claims related to QR code transactions you may be required to provide us with alternative evidence of delivery, or such additional documentation or information relating to the transaction.
If you’re a seller on a marketplace or through a third-party application where PayPal is offered, you must comply with any rules that apply to the marketplace’s or the third party application’s buyer protection program for sales you make through that forum. Any such protections may require you to take certain actions and may impact how claims are processed.
We may allow you to authorise certain marketplaces to use your account to pay amounts you owe to the marketplace or to the buyer (as the case may be) arising from a claim under the terms of the marketplace's own resolution process, which we call marketplace due amounts. If you give such an authorisation and the marketplace has notified us of the claim, you instruct us to process payments of all and any marketplace due amounts relating to that claim from your PayPal account to that marketplace or to the buyer (as the case may be) according to the marketplace's instructions to us. We may treat your instruction for the payment of any given marketplace due amount as cancelled if we decide that the claim would have been determined in your favour had it been filed as a claim with us. You can also cancel this instruction by contacting us. All claims filed directly with the marketplace are governed by the marketplace's policy only. The terms of PayPal Seller Protection do not cover you for claims filed by your buyers directly with the marketplace.
If you are an UK charity and hold a PayPal account, you may be eligible to participate in PayPal Giving Fund programmes. PayPal Giving Fund is a charity registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales (No. 1110538). If we determine that you meet the eligibility requirements as set out in the Charity Certification Policy, you will be enrolled with PayPal Giving Fund upon acceptance of this user agreement. Your relationship with PayPal Giving Fund will be governed by its Charity User Agreement. Upon acceptance of the Charity User Agreement, you'll also be opted in to receive communications from PayPal Giving Fund about its programmes. You can opt out from these communications at any time in your PayPal Giving Fund profile. If you don't want to be enrolled or receive donations from the PayPal Giving Fund, you can opt-out at any time by contacting us. For more information, please see the PayPal Giving Fund Policies.
If you are a seller, this section applies.
If we allow you to accept payments from a payer under a billing agreement, when you present to us a payment request under that billing agreement, you:
If you are a seller, this section applies.
If you are using PayPal Payouts (formerly Mass Pay), the terms of the PayPal Payouts Terms and Conditions will apply.
Once you have access to any account statement(s) or other account activity information made available to you by PayPal with respect to your business account(s), you will have 60 days to notify PayPal in writing of any errors or discrepancies with respect to the pricing or other fees applied by PayPal. If you do not notify PayPal within such timeframe, you accept such information as accurate, and PayPal shall have no obligation to make any corrections. For the purposes of this provision, such pricing or fee errors or discrepancies are different than unauthorised transactions and other electronic transfer errors which are each subject to different notification timeframes as set forth herein.
When you receive a payment, it could be refunded or reversed. We may allow you to send to the payer a refund of the payment. We may carry out a reversal of your payment in certain circumstances. See the rest of this section for more details.
You alone are (and PayPal is not) responsible for:
See our fees for details of the fees you paid to us as the recipient of the original payment which we retain when you use the special commercial transaction refund functionality in your PayPal account, as we may allow from time to time, except to the extent that the refund is an incorrect payment (see the section on Resolving Problems).
If you receive a payment in your account and a reversal takes place, you owe us the full amount of the payment and our losses arising from processing the payment (including any Chargeback fee or Dispute fee). This can include our liability (including any fees, charges and penalties) towards any third party (including the payer and the payer's funding source provider).
A reversal happens when we exercise our right to set off the above amounts from your account under the section Reimbursement for your liability in this user agreement. If your PayPal balance for a particular currency is insufficient to cover the amount you owe us in that currency, we may perform a currency conversion from any PayPal balance in another currency to cover the shortfall against our transaction exchange rate applicable at the time the reversal is being processed. This means that, for example, if you are a seller, amounts of payments received in your account may be removed from your account after you have delivered any goods or services sold.
A reversal can happen when:
For instance:
The amount claimed may be greater than the original amount you received due to currency exchange rate fluctuations between the time of payment and the time of the claim.
If you are a seller, this section applies.
PayPal will charge a Dispute fee to sellers for facilitating the online dispute resolution process for transactions that are processed either through a buyer’s PayPal account or through the ‘Payments without a PayPal account’ service. The Dispute fee applies when the buyer pursues a claim directly with PayPal, a chargeback with their card issuer, or a reversal with their bank. The Dispute fee will be charged at either the Standard Dispute fee rate or the High Volume Dispute fee rate. The Dispute fee will be charged in the currency which you selected for the original transaction listing. If the transaction was in a currency not listed in the Dispute fee table the fee charged will be in your primary holding currency. The Dispute fee will be deducted from your PayPal account after the claim is decided.
The Dispute fee amount will be determined when the dispute case is created. The fee is based on the ratio of the total transaction amount of all Item Not Received and Significantly Not as Described claims you receive compared to the total amount of your sales for the previous three calendar months (Dispute Ratio). Your total claims include all Item Not Received and Significantly Not as Described claims that are filed either directly with and escalated to PayPal or with the buyer's card issuer or bank. Your total claims do not include claims for Unauthorised Transactions. For example, for the month of September, your Dispute Ratio will be calculated by considering your total claims to sales ratio over June, July, and August. The claims ratio for September will determine the dispute fee for all claims filed in October.
If your Disputes Ratio is 1.5% or more and you had more than 100 sales transactions in the previous three full calendar months, you will be charged the High Volume Dispute fee for each dispute. Otherwise, you will be charged the Standard Dispute fee for each dispute.
You will not be charged a Standard Dispute fee for disputes that are:
You will not be charged a High Volume Dispute fee for disputes that are:
Sellers charged High Volume Dispute fees may be required to provide information to us including the cause of their increased dispute rate.
Disputes listed above may be excluded from being charged a Standard Dispute fee or a High Volume Dispute fee, but the claim itself may still be included in the overall calculation of your Dispute Ratio.
If you are a seller, this section applies.
For transactions that are not processed either through a buyer’s PayPal account or through the ‘Payments without a PayPal account’ service, and where the buyer pursues a chargeback for the transaction with their card issuer, PayPal will charge you a Chargeback fee for facilitating the chargeback process. The Chargeback fee will apply regardless of whether the buyer is successful in pursuing the chargeback with the card issuer.
The applicable chargeback fee will be deducted from your PayPal account. The chargeback fee is applied as specified in the Chargeback fee table and will be charged in the currency which you selected for the original transaction listing. If the transaction was in a currency not listed in the Chargeback fee table the fee charged will be in your primary holding currency.
If you are a seller, this section applies.
You should read our provisions on PayPal’s Buyer Protection program and if you sell goods and services to buyers with PayPal accounts in a region other than your own, you also should be familiar with the purchase protection made available by PayPal to buyers in each of those regions as buyers’ rights under these programs may impact you as a seller. You can find information about PayPal Buyer Protection on the Legal Agreements page by selecting your buyer’s location at the top of the page and referring to the corresponding PayPal Buyer Protection program provisions in the corresponding user agreement.
If you lose a claim under PayPal’s Buyer Protection program in any country:
If you are a seller, this section applies.
If you have sold something to a buyer and have already shipped the physical item or provided an intangible good and the transaction is later disputed or reversed under Reversals, Claims or Chargebacks, you may be eligible for reimbursement under PayPal’s Seller Protection program. When it applies, PayPal’s Seller Protection program entitles you to retain the full purchase amount. There is no limit on the number of payments for which you can receive coverage. By accessing the transaction details page in your PayPal account you can determine whether or not your transaction is eligible for protection under this program.
The program terms and conditions are set out in PayPal’s Seller Protection program page and form part of this user agreement.
If you are a seller, this section applies.
The PayPal Advertising Program enables you to promote PayPal services, including PayPal’s Pay Later offers, through PayPal-hosted banners and buttons on your websites or in your customer emails. PayPal may change the content provided through this program at any time for any reason, and PayPal may choose to discontinue the PayPal Advertising Program at any time.
If you participate in this program: | ||
You must: |
You must not: | |
Comply with all integration requirements provided by PayPal or each authorised third partner, including those with respect to the accurate presentation of all PayPal related information. |
Modify any PayPal content or its presentation in any way. | |
Only use the code for PayPal content as provided by PayPal. |
Copy PayPal content from other websites. | |
Use the PayPal content in its entirety with all the links and language provided by PayPal and without any modification by you. |
Create, display or host your own PayPal content, unless authorised by PayPal in writing. | |
Immediately remove all PayPal content from your sites and customer communications and/or cooperate with PayPal or your third party partner to do so, if you stop using a qualifying PayPal payments solution. |
Post PayPal content on social media networks or platforms or anywhere else, unless authorised by PayPal in writing. | |
Keep all PayPal content current and up to date, including by cooperating with PayPal to manually update the PayPal content as its appears on your sites or in your communications and repair or reinstall the code to facilitate future updates. |
Display any PayPal content that is not current. | |
Comply with applicable advertising laws, regulations and standards issued by governmental authorities or advertising self-regulatory bodies. |
If you promote the use of PayPal’s Pay Later offers on your sites and customer communications through the PayPal Advertising Program, there are additional requirements that apply. If you receive customer inquiries relating to either PayPal Credit or Pay in 3, you must direct the customer to PayPal Customer Support.
You are responsible for any damages suffered by PayPal or any third parties resulting from your failure to follow the rules of the PayPal Advertising Program, and if you violate these rules, PayPal may modify or remove the PayPal content you are presenting or require you to remove or modify it immediately. If you fail to follow these rules, we may limit or close your PayPal account.
In connection with your use of our websites, your PayPal account, the PayPal services, or in the course of your interactions with PayPal, other PayPal customers, or third parties, you must not:
You agree that engaging in the above restricted activities diminishes your or our other customers' safe access and/or use of your account and our services generally.
If we believe that you've engaged in any of these activities, we may take one or more of the following actions to protect PayPal, its customers and others:
Please also see the section below on Your liability.
Unless otherwise directed by us, you must not use or attempt to use your account while it is suspended or has been closed. You must ensure that all agreements with sellers or other third parties that involve third party initiated payments (including billing agreement payments) set up from your account are cancelled immediately upon the termination, suspension or closure of your account. You remain liable under this user agreement in respect of all charges and other amounts incurred through the use of your account at any time, irrespective of termination, suspension or closure.
Under certain circumstances, in order to protect PayPal and the security and integrity of the network of buyers and sellers that use the PayPal services, PayPal may take account-level or transaction-level actions. If we take any of the actions described here, we will normally notify you of our actions, but we may, if it is reasonable to do so (for example if you are in breach of this user agreement or we consider it advisable for security reasons), take any of these actions without prior notice to you.
To request information in connection with an account limitation, hold or reserve, you should visit the Resolution Centre or follow the instructions in our email notice with respect to the limitation, hold or reserve.
You acknowledge and agree that any funds held under this user agreement may be placed in your reserve account and that you will provide to us any information as we may reasonably request to allow us to determine whether the risk has passed.
A hold is an action that PayPal may take under certain circumstances either at the transaction level or the account level. When PayPal places a hold on a payment amount, the money is not available to either the sender or the recipient. PayPal reviews many factors before placing a hold on a payment, including: account tenure, transaction activity, business type, past customer disputes, and overall customer satisfaction. Some common situations where PayPal will hold payments include where we have reason to believe that:
When we identify a potentially high-risk transaction, we review the transaction more closely before allowing it to proceed. This may be because we have the reasonable suspicion that the payer's PayPal account is being used in relation to restricted activities or for other reasons as determined by us in our reasonable discretion. This may include where there is a risk of liability (a non-exhaustive list of examples of such risk is set out in the section Actions We May Take If You Engage In Any Restricted Activities above).
If a payment is subject to payment review, we may:
As a buyer, this may delay your receipt of the item you purchased. If we clear the transaction, we will notify the seller and direct them to ship the item.
If we don't clear the transaction, we will cancel it and return the funds to you, unless we are legally required to take other action.
All payments that complete payment review are still subject to being reversed under the terms of this user agreement but will be PayPal‘s Seller Protection program eligible if they meet the PayPal‘s Seller Protection program requirements. PayPal will provide notices to you by email and/or in the transaction history tab of your PayPal account. A payment subject to payment review is a review of the payment only and is implemented to reduce the risk of PayPal users receiving high risk transactions. A payment subject to payment review is neither a review nor a representation by PayPal as to the commercial dealings, character or reputation of a party to the payment transaction and should not be considered as a lessening of the respect of any person.
Certain PayPal functionality may allow you (whether directly or via someone you permit to act on your behalf, like an online marketplace platform on which you transact as a seller) to instruct us to hold your funds (including the proceeds of payments you receive using PayPal) in your reserve account.
In such a case we will show you the availability status of those funds in your balance – the status descriptions may differ according to the functionality you used to instruct us to place the hold. We will release the hold on the funds according to the instruction that you (or the entity that you have permitted to act on your behalf) give to us, subject to the rest of this user agreement.
Limitations are implemented to help protect PayPal, buyers and sellers when we notice restricted activities, an increased financial risk, or activity that appears to us as unusual or suspicious. Limitations also help us collect information necessary for keeping your PayPal account open.
There are several reasons why your PayPal account could be limited, including where we have reason to believe that:
We may also limit your PayPal account in order to comply with applicable law.
You will need to resolve any issues with your account before a limitation can be removed. Normally, this is done after you provide us with the information we request. However, if we reasonably believe a risk still exists after you have provided us that information, we may take action to protect PayPal, our users, a third party, or you from reversals, fees, fines, penalties, legal and/or regulatory risks and any other liability.
Subject to applicable laws and regulations, we may place a reserve on your PayPal account at any time if we believe there may be a high level of risk associated with you, your PayPal account, your business model, or your transactions. When we place a reserve on your PayPal account, it means that all or some portion of the funds in your PayPal account is reserved as unavailable for withdrawal in order to protect against the risk of transactions made by you being reversed or invalidated or any other risk related to your PayPal account or use of the PayPal services. We make decisions about whether to place a reserve based on a number of factors, including information available to us from both internal sources and from third parties.
PayPal considers a list of non-exclusive factors and whether and how these factors have changed over time, including:
There are two types of reserves that may be placed on your PayPal account, and one or both may be applied at the same time:
If we place a reserve on funds in your PayPal account, the money will be moved to your reserve account and shown as “pending” and we'll notify you about it.
If we change the reserve due to a change in our risk assessment, we'll notify you about it as well.
You will undertake, at your own expense, any further action required to establish a reserve or other form of security in a manner reasonably determined by us. This can involve executing any necessary documents and registering any form of document reasonably required by us to allow us to perfect any form of security interest.
If you have any reason to believe that there is a problem with your account or our service, follow these steps:
This is where you entered into a billing agreement but a payment was sent from your account to another PayPal account under that billing agreement where:
This is where a payment sent from your account to another PayPal account was not sent as you specified when you asked us to make it (e.g. for the wrong amount, delayed, wrong recipient) or you received such a payment.
This is where a payment sent from your account wasn't authorised by you (or anyone who's authorised to make payments for you).
This is where there was another security or fraud problem, such as:
This is where there was another type of problem with your account or with our services which is not mentioned above. For instance, we may have made a factual, computational or mathematical error related to your PayPal when you added money to or withdrew money from your PayPal account.
If a purchase that you paid for with PayPal was not as described or you have not received the purchase, PayPal Buyer Protection, not this section, may apply. Please see the PayPal Buyer Protection section for how to deal with these particular problems.
Contact us as soon as possible to tell us about the problem (including the type of problem you are contacting us about so that we can help you as quickly as we can). You can report a problem, initiate a dispute, or respond to a dispute raised by another user in the Resolution Center.
You must give us all the information we reasonably request as to the circumstances of the problem and take all reasonable steps we request to assist us in our investigation.
If you tell us about your problem orally, we may require that you report your problem in writing within ten Business Days after that.
We may provide third parties with information we consider relevant in such circumstances in accordance with our Privacy Statement.
Subject to the rest of this user agreement, we aim to investigate the problem and work with you to resolve it within 60 days. In addition, if your problem is:
You are not entitled to any financial compensation from us as outlined above and you will owe to us (and we may reverse from your account) any compensation you have already received from us if:
Unexpected billing agreement payment |
Incorrect payment |
Unauthorised transaction |
It takes you longer than eight weeks after the payment was made to tell us about the problem; or You agreed for us to make your payment and the details were made available to you by us or the merchant at least four weeks before the payment was made. |
It takes you longer than 13 months after the payment was made to tell us about the problem; or We can show that you gave us the wrong payment details; or We can show that the payment was sent as the payer specified when the payer asked us to make it; or Through no fault of ours, you did not have enough PayPal balance to complete the payment; or We can show our system was not working properly and you knew about the breakdown when you started the transaction; or A delay which you claimed caused the incorrect payment actually resulted from PayPal applying a hold, limitation or reserve under this user agreement |
It takes you longer than 13 months after the payment was made to tell us about the problem; or We can show that the payment was made because you did not keep your account safe either intentionally or with gross negligence (for instance, you very carelessly chose to share your PayPal ID and/or password/PIN with someone else); or There was another security /fraud problem and you didn't tell us about it. We will not pay you compensation for any unauthorised transactions made from your account before you told us about that problem. |
Sometimes we might spot the problem first. If we need to notify you about the problem, we will ordinarily do so through the Secure Messaging Centre, which you need to log into your account to access. If you should take action urgently, we may also use other means such as email to request action.
If a payment was made from us to your funding source by way of mistake and/or in addition to compensation you receive(d) from your bank, we may correct the mistake/payment by debiting or crediting (as the case may be) your appropriate funding source(s). If debiting your appropriate funding source fails, we may also use other payment sources you have on file in your PayPal account to recover the payment amount. The hierarchy of payment sources as defined in the Funding payments you send from your account section will be applied. If we are still unable to recover the transaction amount, we may exercise our rights in accordance with the provisions in the section headed Our Rights.
Contact us to report a complaint regarding our products and services.
If you have cause to complain about our products and services, our goal is to learn about and address your concerns in a reasonable and prompt way.
We will aim to respond to your complaint as quickly as possible; however, depending on the complexity of the issue, it may take up to 15 business days for payments-related complaints and up to 8 weeks for all other complaints. If there's any delay in our final response, we'll send you an update on the progress.
If the outcome of any complaint about our services is still not to your satisfaction, you can refer your complaint to:
You can contact us by:
You must send legal notices in connection with this user agreement to us by postal mail.
You agree that we may provide notice or other information to you by posting it on the PayPal website(s) (including the posting of information which is only accessed by you by logging into your account), emailing it to the email address listed in your account, mailing it to the street address listed in your account, calling you by phone, or sending you a “text” / SMS message. You must keep the contact details you give to us up to date and have internet access and an e-mail account to receive communications and information relating to our services. With the exception of amendments to this user agreement, such notice shall be considered to be received by you within 24 hours of the time it is posted to the PayPal website(s) or emailed to you. If the notice is sent by mail, we will consider it to have been received by you three Business Days after it is sent. We reserve the right to close your PayPal account if you withdraw your consent to receive electronic communications.
Our decision about holds, limitations, reserves and any other actions we take under this user agreement whether they restrict or extend your access to our service, our infrastructure, our websites, our software or our systems (including any networks and servers used to provide any of our services) whether operated by us or on our behalf (including, without limitation, any blockages, limitations, suspensions, terminations, holds and reserves) may be based on confidential criteria that are essential to our management of risk and the protection of PayPal, our customers and/or service providers. We may use proprietary fraud and risk modelling when assessing the risk associated with your PayPal account. In addition, we may be restricted by regulation or a governmental authority from disclosing certain information to you about such decisions. We have no obligation to disclose the details of our risk management or security procedures to you.
To secure your performance of this user agreement, you grant to us a legal claim against the funds in your PayPal account as security for any amount you may owe to us. This is known in legal terms as a “lien” on and “security interest” in your PayPal account.
If your PayPal account is inactive for at least 12 consecutive months, we may charge an annual inactivity fee. Inactive means that you have not logged into your PayPal account or otherwise used your PayPal account to send, receive or withdraw money.
You are responsible for and shall reimburse PayPal for all reversals, chargebacks, claims, fees, fines, penalties and/or other liability incurred by PayPal because you did not comply with the terms of this user agreement and/or your improper use of PayPal services except to the extent that the liability arose as a foreseeable result of PayPal not exercising reasonable care and skill in providing PayPal services.
You agree that we may set off any of the amounts held in accounts held or controlled by you with any fees, charges or other amounts you owe us and any such amounts you owe to our affiliates as defined in the Indemnification and Limitation of Liability section below (including, without limitation, in respect of any services provided by any such affiliate). In simple terms, our right to set off means that we may deduct such fees, charges or other amounts mentioned in this section from a balance in a PayPal account held or controlled by you.
If there are insufficient funds in your balance to cover your liability, we reserve the right to collect the amount you owe us by deducting the amount (or any part of it) from any payments received in or money you add to your PayPal account. Otherwise you agree to reimburse us through other means. We may also recover amounts you owe us through legal means, including, without limitation, through the use of a debt collection agency.
If PayPal invalidates and reverses a payment that you made to a recipient (either at your initiative or otherwise), you agree that PayPal assumes your rights against the recipient and third parties related to the payment, and may pursue those rights directly or on your behalf, in PayPal's discretion. This is known in legal terms as your “subrogation” or “assignment” to PayPal of your rights against the recipient and third parties related to the payment.
Our failure to act with respect to a breach of any of your obligations under this user agreement by you or others does not waive our right to act with respect to subsequent or similar breaches.
We may request information from you as we reasonably require to facilitate our actions described in this user agreement, enable us to reduce the risk of fraud or comply with our regulatory (including anti-money laundering) obligations. You must comply with these requests in a timely fashion. This may involve you faxing, emailing or otherwise providing to us at your own expense identification documents and information about your finance and operations (such as your most recent financial statements and merchant processing statements).
In this section and the Intellectual Property section, we use the term “PayPal” to refer to us (PayPal UK Ltd), our ultimate parent company PayPal Holdings, Inc., our affiliates, and anybody who works for us or them or who is authorised to act on our or their behalf. Our affiliates include each entity that we control, we are controlled by or we are under common control with. Anybody who works for us or our affiliates or who is authorised to act on our or their behalf includes each of our or their respective directors, officers, employees, agents, joint venturers, service providers and suppliers.
If you are not a consumer, you must indemnify PayPal for actions related to your PayPal account and your use of the PayPal services.
You agree to defend, indemnify and hold PayPal harmless from any claim or demand (including reasonable legal fees) made or incurred by any third party due to or arising out of:
If you are a consumer, you will be responsible for any losses, expenses or other costs incurred by PayPal which are caused by:
If you are a consumer, this section does not apply.
PayPal's liability is limited with respect to your PayPal account and your use of the PayPal services. In no event shall PayPal be liable for:
arising out of or in connection with our websites, software, systems (including any networks and servers used to provide any of the PayPal services) operated by us or on our behalf, any of the PayPal services, or this user agreement (however arising, including negligence), unless and to the extent prohibited by law.
Our liability to:
in any circumstance is limited to the actual amount of direct damages (excluding direct loss of profits), unless and to the extent prohibited by law.
In addition, to the extent permitted by applicable law, PayPal is not liable, and you agree not to hold PayPal responsible, for any damages or losses (including, but not limited to, loss of money, goodwill, or reputation, profits, or other intangible losses or any special, indirect, or consequential damages) resulting directly or indirectly from:
Nothing in this user agreement will limit PayPal’s responsibilities to you for fraudulent misrepresentation or for any other fraudulent act or omission, or where PayPal is at fault and the law does not allow us to exclude or limit our liability.
If you are a consumer, if PayPal fails to comply with this user agreement and does not exercise reasonable care and skill in providing the services, PayPal is responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of its breach of this user agreement or its negligence, but PayPal is not responsible for any loss or damage that is not foreseeable. Loss or damage is foreseeable if it is an obvious consequence of a PayPal breach or if it was contemplated by you and PayPal at the time you entered into this user agreement. Losses of profit or business opportunities would not, for example, be foreseeable as consumers use PayPal accounts for personal not business use.
We won’t be responsible for losses due to:
If you are a consumer, this section does not apply.
The PayPal services are provided “as-is” and without any representation or warranty, whether express, implied or statutory. PayPal specifically disclaims any implied warranties of:
PayPal does not have any control over the products or services provided by sellers who accept PayPal as a payment method, and PayPal cannot ensure that a buyer or a seller you are dealing with will actually complete the transaction or is authorised to do so.
PayPal does not guarantee continuous, uninterrupted or secure access to any part of the PayPal services.
Operation of our websites, software, or systems (including any networks and servers used to provide any of the PayPal services) operated by us or on our behalf may be interfered with by numerous factors outside of our control.
PayPal will make reasonable efforts to ensure that requests for electronic debits and credits involving bank accounts, debit cards, credit cards, and cheque issuances are processed in a timely manner but PayPal makes no representations or warranties regarding the amount of time needed to complete processing because the PayPal services are dependent upon many factors outside of our control, such as delays in the banking system or international mail service.
Some countries do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties, so the foregoing disclaimers may not apply to you.
We cannot guarantee the accuracy of information contained in our correspondence, reports, on the website(s) and given verbally by our directors, officers and staff in all circumstances and contexts, and no reliance should be placed on such information by you.
You must check all correspondence between us carefully and tell us as soon as possible if it includes something which appears to you to be wrong or not made in accordance with your instructions.
If you are a consumer:
PayPal does not control the products or services provided by sellers who accept PayPal as a payment method, and PayPal cannot ensure that a buyer or a seller you are dealing with will actually complete the transaction or is authorised to do so.
PayPal does not guarantee continuous or uninterrupted access to any part of the PayPal services or the time within which payments will be completed. Our services may depend on third parties and other factors outside of our control, such as the international banking system, which could lead to delays or interruptions.
You must review all communications between us carefully and tell us as soon as possible if there seem to be mistakes.
If you have a dispute with any other PayPal account holder, you release PayPal from any and all:
of every kind and nature, known and unknown, arising out of or in any way connected with such disputes.
In entering into this release you expressly waive any protections that would otherwise limit the coverage of this release to include only those claims which you may know or suspect to exist in your favour at the time of agreeing to this release.
You alone (not PayPal) are responsible for understanding and complying with any and all laws, rules and regulations of your specific jurisdiction that may be applicable to you in connection with your use of our services (for example, in relation to regulated activity, licensed activity, export or import activity, Taxes or foreign currency transactions).
"PayPal.com," "PayPal," and all logos related to the PayPal services are either trademarks or registered trademarks of PayPal or PayPal's licensors. You may not copy, imitate, modify or use them without PayPal's prior written consent. In addition, all page headers, custom graphics, button icons, and scripts are service marks, trademarks, and/or trade dress of PayPal. You may not copy, imitate, modify or use them without our prior written consent. You may use HTML logos provided by PayPal for the purpose of directing web traffic to the PayPal services. You may not alter, modify or change these HTML logos in any way, use them in a manner that mischaracterises “PayPal” or the PayPal services or display them in any manner that implies PayPal's sponsorship or endorsement. All right, title and interest in and to the PayPal websites, any content thereon, the PayPal services, the technology related to the PayPal services, and any and all technology and any content created or derived from any of the foregoing is the exclusive property of PayPal and its licensors.
If you are using PayPal software such as an API, developer's toolkit or other software application, which may include software provided by or integrated with software, systems or services of our service providers, that you have downloaded or otherwise accessed through a web or mobile platform, then PayPal grants you a revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, non-transferable, royalty-free limited license to access and/or use PayPal's software in accordance with the documentation accompanying such software. This license grant applies to the software and all updates, upgrades, new versions and replacement software. You may not rent, lease or otherwise transfer your rights in the software to a third party. You must comply with the implementation, access and use requirements contained in all documentation accompanying the PayPal services. If you do not comply with implementation, access and use requirements you will be liable for all resulting damages suffered by you, PayPal and third parties related to your failure to comply. PayPal may update or discontinue any software upon notice to you. While PayPal may have (1) integrated certain third party materials and technology into any web or other application, including its software, and/or (2) accessed and used certain third party materials and technology to facilitate providing you with the PayPal services, you have not been granted and do not otherwise retain any rights in or to any such third party materials. You agree not to modify, alter, tamper with, repair, copy, reproduce, adapt, distribute, display, publish, reverse engineer, translate, disassemble, decompile or otherwise attempt to create any source code that is derived from the software or any third party materials or technology, or otherwise create any derivative works from any of the software or third party materials or technology. You acknowledge that all rights, title and interest to PayPal's software are owned by PayPal and any third-party materials integrated therein are owned PayPal's third party service providers. Any other third-party software application you use on PayPal's websites is subject to the license you agreed to with the third party that provides you with this software. You acknowledge that PayPal does not own, control nor have any responsibility or liability for any such third party software application you elect to use on any of our websites, software and/or in connection with the PayPal services.
PayPal does not claim ownership of the content that you provide, upload, submit or send to PayPal. Nor does PayPal claim ownership of the content you host on third-party websites or applications that use PayPal services to provide payments services related to your content. Subject to the next paragraph, when you provide content to the PayPal companies or post content using PayPal services, you grant PayPal (and parties that we work with) a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, transferable, and worldwide license to use your content and associated intellectual property and publicity rights to help us improve, operate and promote our current services and develop new ones. PayPal will not compensate you for any of your content. You acknowledge that PayPal's use of your content will not infringe any intellectual property or publicity rights. Further, you acknowledge and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights of the content you provide, and you agree to waive your moral rights and promise not to assert such rights against PayPal.
Notwithstanding the provisions of the prior paragraph, if you are a seller using the PayPal services to accept payments for goods and services, you hereby grant PayPal a worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable (through multiple tiers), and royalty-free, fully paid-up, right to use and display publicly, during the term of this user agreement, your trademark(s) (including but not limited to registered and unregistered trademarks, trade names, service marks, logos, domain names and other designations owned, licensed to or used by you) for the purpose of (1) identifying you as a merchant that accepts a PayPal service as a payment form, and (2) any other use to which you specifically consent.
You may not transfer or assign any rights or obligations you have under this user agreement without PayPal's prior written consent. PayPal may (with notice) transfer or assign this user agreement or any right or obligation under this user agreement at any time.
On notice to you, we may transfer or assign any rights or obligation under this user agreement from PayPal to a subsidiary or affiliate of PayPal Holdings, Inc. which is the ultimate parent company of PayPal.
This user agreement and the relationship between us is governed by the laws of England and Wales.
If you bring a claim against us in court, you submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales. If you are contracting with us as a consumer this does not limit your rights under mandatory statutory consumer protection regulations and for you to bring proceedings before the courts of the place where you are domiciled.
If you integrate or otherwise reference PayPal services on your website, PayPal may use automated technologies (e.g., website crawling) to assess your website and collect any publicly accessible or available data to ensure compliance with this agreement and to combat malicious or fraudulent activity.
In connection with such technologies, PayPal will not collect any of your customer personal data. However, there may be times we collect personal data about you that you publish on your websites. Such personal data shall be processed for the purposes described in this section and shall be subject to our Privacy Statement.
Protecting your privacy is very important to us. Please review our Privacy Statement in order to better understand our commitment to maintaining your privacy, as well as our use and disclosure of your information.
We will communicate with you in English only.
This user agreement is concluded in English only. Any translation of this user agreement is provided solely for your convenience and is not intended to modify the terms of this user agreement. In the event of a conflict between the English version of this user agreement and a version in a language other than English, the English version shall be the definitive version.
To the extent that you, in your capacity as a seller and/or using a business profile, process any personal data about a PayPal customer pursuant to this user agreement, you and PayPal will each be an independent data controller (and not joint controllers), meaning we will each separately determine the purposes and means of processing such personal data. We each agree to comply with the requirements of any applicable privacy and data protection laws, including any applicable regulations, directives, codes of practice, and regulatory requirements applicable to data controllers in connection with this agreement. We each have and will follow our own, independently determined privacy statements, notices, policies and procedures for any such personal data that we each process in connection with this agreement.
In complying with the applicable data protection laws, we will each:
Any personal data provided to you by PayPal in connection with the PayPal services, excluding personal data collected or obtained by you directly from the customer, will be used by you only to the limited extent that is necessary and relevant to the PayPal services and for no other purpose, including marketing purposes, unless you have obtained the prior consent of the customer. You represent, warrant, and covenant that you will provide and/or obtain all necessary disclosures and consents, as applicable, in connection with your data collection and sharing practices with PayPal. You may not disclose or distribute any customer personal data provided to you by PayPal to a third-party, unless such third-party is your service provider and acting on your behalf (as defined by applicable law).
This user agreement sets forth the entire understanding between you and us with respect to our service.
If any provision of this user agreement is held to be invalid or unenforceable, such provision shall be struck out and the remaining provisions shall be enforced.
A person who is not a party to this user agreement has no rights under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to rely upon or enforce any term of this user agreement (except for the third parties falling under the definition of “PayPal” in the Indemnification and Limitation of Liability section above, in respect of their rights as specified in this user agreement) but this does not affect any right or remedy of third parties which exists or is available apart from that act.
We may allow you to authenticate with PayPal when you log into certain external websites or mobile apps. If we do so, we may share your login status with any third party enabling you to log in in this way, as well as the personal and other account information that you consent to being shared so that the third party can recognise you. PayPal will not give the third party access to your account and will only make payments from your account to that third party with your specific authorisation and instruction.
If you enable visitors to authenticate with PayPal when they log into your website, app, or your customer accounts, you must agree to any specific terms applicable when this functionality is made available to you, and comply with any specifications in any integration manual or guideline. We do not guarantee or otherwise represent the identity of any user of this login method. We will not share with you the personal and other account information of the user (including login status) held by PayPal unless the user has consented to our disclosure of that information to you.
When we refer to the “PSRs” in this section we mean the UK’s Payment Services Regulations 2017/752. We consider you to be a “Corporate Customer” if, on the date you entered into this user agreement, you are not:
We and you may agree that certain provisions of the PSRs do not apply to your use of our services if you are a Corporate Customer. If you are a Corporate Customer you agree that: