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No more instant transfer (greyed out)? e-check questions
 

This might be a little bit off topic here, but I really want to find out what's going on and please give me your input if you know something about this.


I recently bought an item on ebay and I went ahead to pay it with a paypal account I have verified with ING saving and Simon card on extend use program. It turned out that I could only use either e-check from my bank account or just credit card.

Now I have to wait for more than a week just to have the payment cleared on seller’s side before my item can be shipped out.

I just don’t understand why they take out instant payment when I meet all the requirements – I verified both my bank account and my still-active Simon card. So I did some search on the net and found out many people are having the same problems. They used to be able to pay with instant transfer and now, they can only use e-check.

Here are some of the possibilities I concluded from the search. Please let me know if you are pretty sure any of the following DOES affect the use of instant transfer:

1)
New account – the paypal account I used is just a bit more than a month old, which might be the reason to have instant transfer blocked out. However, I also heard some people with a 5 year old account and still cannot use it.

2)
Expired credit card – it is also possible if your on account credit card expires and you haven’t renew it, instant transfer will not be available. I am sure my Simon card is still active, so this may not be the reason for my case.

3)
Credit card doesn’t have enough credit line – some said they will run an authorization on your credit card and if it doesn’t have enough credit to cover the fund when it falls from your bank, they will take out instant transfer option. This is also unlikely to be a reason for my case, as I’ve tried to send a payment my Simon card can cover (I only have $20 in the card) and instant transfer option is still greyed out.

4)
Paypal doesn’t take Simon card as a good funding option – I think up this one because it’s a prepaid card. But how does paypal know if you are using a prepaid? If they really know, why they still let me verify the card in the first place?

5)
They just randomly block it – this is also possible because paypal is capable to do such stupid things.


Please share your experience on this matter. I appreciate your help.

Its more than likely 1 and 5. The system apparently calculates the risk factor per transaction.