PayPal Banned My Account: Here are 3 Things I Did Next
Did PayPal ban your account recently? My PayPal account which I have been using to receive payments since 2015 got banned. Here’s all you need to know about the ban.
Around September 2022, I got an email from PayPal to upload my proof of identity and address because I had used my PayPal account to receive huge amounts that year. My total PayPal transactions for 2022 was nearing 10,000 USD.
The PayPal account I had was a Dubai PayPal account while I’m a Nigerian living in Nigeria – I have never been to the United Arab Emirates.
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Why did I get banned from PayPal?
When you open a PayPal account, there are two types of verifications you need to do; you need to verify with your debit card and also verify your identity and house address when you begin to do large transactions.
I had already done the first verification with my debit card. You can read my article on how to verify a PayPal account with a debit card.
Now, PayPal was asking for documents which I did not have. They asked for a United Arab Emirates identity card and utility bill or statement of account with a UAE address on it.
I could not provide these things so my PayPal account got banned.
Unfortunately, I reached out to someone who promised to remove the limits and the actions he took made the ban faster.
When PayPal bans an account, you cannot use the email (obviously) or debit cards you have added to the account to create another account. All my bank cards were connected to this account so this meant I had to get new debit cards if I wanted to create a new PayPal account.
Steps I took after the PayPal Ban
These are some of the steps I took after PayPal banned me;
I Created a Nigerian PayPal Account
Home sweet home. I came back to the roots.
After I got banned, I decided not to create a foreign PayPal account again. There are people who claim that they operate a foreign PayPal account from Nigeria and do huge volumes of transactions without limitations. I think this is only possible if they have a means of identification to prove they reside in the said country.
One of the reasons why I did not create a new foreign PayPal account is because most platforms I work with have alternative means of payment like Payooner and direct wire transfer.
I use the Nigerian PayPal account to make payments on Fiverr and other platforms that accept payments with PayPal. I would have ditched PayPal but it is a useful tool as I do not have to put my card details on every platform where I need to make payment.
I Updated my Payment Method to Alternatives
Like I said earlier, there are more options to receive payments unlike a few years ago. After PayPal banned my account, I visited all affiliate platforms I work with and changed my Payment method.
The dominant payment method I chose was a direct wire transfer to my Access Bank domiciliary account. If you are in this dilemma with me and you do not have a domiciliary account, you can easily open one or create a Geegpay account.
GeegPay provides you with a United States bank account number. You can use this on affiliate platforms you work with to receive payments.
Where Geeg pay shines over having a domiciliary account are, you do not need to have a guarantor to create an account, you get a USA account as opposed to having a Nigerian domiciliary account and you can easily convert your Dollar to Naira on Geeg Pay at fair rates.
I use Paystack and Crypto to Receive Foreign Payments
When my PayPal account was active, foreign clients trusted me more because if I don’t deliver their jobs, they can easily request for a refund from PayPal.
Using Paystack to receive payments from foreign clients means the client has to trust me to deliver a perfect job or trust me to give a refund if they are not satisfied with the job done because Paystack refund does not really work the way PayPal does.
However, this is not an issue for two reasons; I have built trust over the years so some clients pay through crypto or Paystack. For clients who are just getting to know me and are not comfortable with crypto payments, I tell them to make the Payment through Fiverr.
Fiverr acts as the middleman. If I do not do a perfect job, they complain to Fiverr. The money is put on hold until the issue is resolved.
Conclusion
Some years ago, not having a PayPal account meant you could not earn an income online because almost every platform had a single means of paying foreign affiliates; PayPal. Today, there are a lot of options available and the monopoly PayPal once had, no longer exists.
I miss my PayPal account though because there are few platforms I work with that only pay through PayPal (Linkmink). I have to use a friend’s PayPal account to receive my commissions from them. Hopefully, they open more payout methods.
Have you been banned by PayPal before, were you able to fix the ban? Or what will you do if your account gets banned. I would love to hear from you in the comment section.
