Buying from your own e-commerce site

[JJ373]

I'm interested in buying stuff from my own website to liquidate funds from a stealth account with no bank account attached. I understand that the recommended way to remove funds from US PayPal is by using bank accounts. But let's say you have more stealth accounts than the amount of bank accounts you want to open. (And I realize that you can open multiple accounts at one bank, so it's easy to open additional. But for the purposes of this question, I'm just focusing on for those that have mutiple stealths both with and without bank accounts and how to cash out those that are without, not trying to use this as the only cash-out method for all accounts.)

What I want to know is how risky actually is it to buy stuff from your own e-commerce website? If a PayPal account never removes funds to a bank account, is it suspicious to them if all of your eBays sales volume going into a PayPal account is going back out in purchases? Wouldn't to them a typical eBay seller have to eventually be withdrawing money to be making a profit? Is the fact that they think you are always "spending" all your profit at a particular merchant going to specifically raise red flags to PayPal? Or does the way PayPal risk detection work indicate that they would not think it that abnormal for PayPal balance to all get "spent"?

I'm thinking particually of how eBay sellers particularly use PayPal accounts vs. how maybe a general consumer uses PayPal. I assume maybe non-eBay sellers using PayPal to buy stuff (i.e. the people who buy these PayPal reload cards, etc.) are more interested in how to get money into PayPal so they can use it to spend it, and are not having issues with trying to get money out of PayPal like eBay sellers & stealthers do, so therefore perhaps as a whole PayPal wouldn't be suspicious of someone spending all their balance, in fact they want you to be spending your balance rather than be taking it out, because they make more money on the fees.

TL;DR: Is spending your PayPal balance going to make them want to take a closer look because they could think you're an eBay seller trying to launder money, or are they just glad you're spending money and making them more money for fees?

[phaz0rz]

In my opinion this isn't particularly risky if done correctly. I have a 50k/month account which I never withdraw any money from. The bank account attached to this account is dead so I use 100% of the money that comes in to pay suppliers.

I also have a number of smaller stealths with no bank attached, and I'll frequently invoice between accounts so I can move money to a bank-attached account.

It may look suspicious but in my experience Paypal does not care, as long as you are a good seller with a good track record and as long as you don't try to avoid paying Paypal their cut (fees).

[Ubaida]

I think as long as you are paying the fees than it shouldn't be a problem. I think they would be happier than you withdrawing it.

[rsot]

Stealth method has MANY applications if you think about how Paypal links accounts...

[JJ373]

Thank you for the responses.

Originally Posted by phaz0rz

In my opinion this isn't particularly risky if done correctly. I have a 50k/month account which I never withdraw any money from...

What would make doing it risky? Many, many purchases from the same (your own) e-commerce site and never buying anything from somewhere else? Would mixing in a few purchases from other retailers or alternatively having two or three of your own e-commerce sites to buy from so that you are not always buying from the same site?

Any other ways that this could be more risky and that should be avoided?

Or is this line of thinking just paranoia -- if they have no reason to believe there is a connection between a PayPal account and a merchant that you're buying from, that alone wouldn't cause a problem. If that merchant is your supplier, of course you would be buying from them a lot.

[fox20c]

I would take the precaution of using a different ip address where necessary, this will help avoid tripping any flags with PayPal. Maybe even go as far as setting up new user profile on your computer and use those to order from just to keep things organized and off paypal radar.

[digim0n]

I've actually started doing this. Been working good for me so far. All my ip's are seperated so no issues there with linking. I'd advise however, to mix it up abit and not have ONLY your stealth accounts sending payments there but instead have other real sales mixed in too. This way it can be disguised pretty easily.

[miketyson]

Originally Posted by phaz0rz

In my opinion this isn't particularly risky if done correctly. I have a 50k/month account which I never withdraw any money from. The bank account attached to this account is dead so I use 100% of the money that comes in to pay suppliers.

I also have a number of smaller stealths with no bank attached, and I'll frequently invoice between accounts so I can move money to a bank-attached account.

It may look suspicious but in my experience Paypal does not care, as long as you are a good seller with a good track record and as long as you don't try to avoid paying Paypal their cut (fees).

Just wanna make sure when you say no bank attached that means no bank to withdraw but still verified with vba? I tried operating with no bank it was difficult to buy things not being "verified"

[aspkin]

Personal website? Or something like shopify?

It's doable.

[yankee]

Just small balance paypal accounts or do you mean on a consistent basis on staple selling accounts as a primary cash out method?

[empirestate]

You are making Paypal richer with this method, just open bank accounts for each account.

[phaz0rz]

Originally Posted by miketyson

Just wanna make sure when you say no bank attached that means no bank to withdraw but still verified with vba? I tried operating with no bank it was difficult to buy things not being "verified"

The high volume account I mentioned is still verified because I never removed the closed bank account attached to it.

But with my smaller non tax-ID accounts I frequently send $800-1500 invoices to move money into an account with a bank attached. I don't ever use VBA's but they have VCC's, so they're "confirmed" or whatever. I haven't had a problem doing this on smaller accounts. I couldn't care less if I'm paying Paypal a little bit to move my money.

I also buy 90% of my shipping/office supplies using funds in non-verified (not even a VBA) Paypal accounts, and those orders can be rather large. Never been a problem.

[yotano211]

I kinda do the same thing, invoice myself to a paypal account with a bank attached on new accounts. When ibl see that the account will last i attach a bank bank later on

[fox20c]

Originally Posted by yotano211

I kinda do the same thing, invoice myself to a paypal account with a bank attached on new accounts. When ibl see that the account will last i attach a bank bank later on

I can also confirm that this works well, if you dont want to/are not able to attach bank accounts to your PP accounts. The % you pay to PayPal is just the cost of doing business.

[newjerseymax]

Lots of Good stories! However, please remember I have seen posts also, where this was done and all accounts linked and lost. So yes it can work, but methods must be closely monitored.

Hoping it works out best for you!

[yankee]

What does not work is:

Run 10 stealth accounts. One has a bank account attached. The other nine do not. Every day the 9 accounts send funds to the 1 account. Every day the one account withdraws funds.

This is death to accounts and extremely rapidly if gift payments are in the mix.

If you have a higher volume older account, preferably over a year and has tax information on it, it can of course handle small use of receiving regular paypal payments.

[glacier922]

^^

This is true, I can confirm this.

[Haidukken]

Originally Posted by yankee

What does not work is:

Run 10 stealth accounts. One has a bank account attached. The other nine do not. Every day the 9 accounts send funds to the 1 account. Every day the one account withdraws funds.

What? Really?! ****.

I need to rethink my whole operation

[jjohnson777]

In USA, no reason for it unless on bank blacklist. Due how many small banks in each state can virtually make unlimited banking accounts. In other countries where fewer banks more understandable.

[jman33]

This is just my personal opinion, but I think it is risky. It wouldn't take much for Paypal to come up with an algorithm that sets off a flag when an account receives X number or X% of payments from Paypal accounts that have never had a bank account used for withdrawal and card payment linked to them.

Unless your e-commerce site has hundreds (or even thousands, depending on the revenue) of customers a month, having only stealth accounts sending you payments every month might get someone's attention at Paypal, especially if it's a large amount. Then you'd risk destroying your whole business overnight. Not worth the risk.

[rsot]

Originally Posted by empirestate

You are making Paypal richer with this method, just open bank accounts for each account.

This is also true - PP taking fees on each transfer/payment

[newjerseymax]

Its not a bad option to have a good shipping address and buy small amounts of precious metals, stones, etc.....