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You’re a genuine non-profit so you’re eligible for special PayPal rates amongst other things. Do you have an account manager or is this a PayPal account you set

You’re a genuine non-profit so you’re eligible for special PayPal rates amongst other things. Do you have an account manager or is this a PayPal account you set up self-service with no prior PayPal human interaction? Unfortunately, while posting on HN can resolve Stripe issues, it doesn’t help with PayPal. You need to find a human advocate within PayPal (especially difficult if you’re not already connected with any humans there now that you’ve been suspended). Start planning for this to not be resolved, because it rarely is. Financial account shutdowns are very rarely reversed. Start making alternate arrangements, preferably with a company that can allocate a human to you who understands and supports your use-case(s) — financial service relationships should always have humans involved if they’re integral to your business. I’d recommend contacting Wise (formerly TransferWise) to see if they can meet your future needs.

zachlatta 4y ago
This is a self-service account set up through the website and we don’t have any human point of contact at PayPal. Do you have any suggestions on how we might be able to get in touch with someone who could advocate for us? My email is in the OP if that helps. I know we have struggled with Wise in the past (they couldn’t process our grants to people in India), but will look into again to see if they can help.
- phphphphp 4y ago
  If you don’t already have relationships inside PayPal and you’re suspended, I don’t think you have much chance of finding an advocate from the outside. I can’t help, unfortunately. The best option for you would be to track down any PayPal employees who work specifically with non-profits (LinkedIn would be a good start) and hope that you can use your non-profit status to leverage some helpful treatment — but as I said in my first comment, start planning on the basis that help is not coming. Ultimately, offering financial services is more risk management than it is software: the reason PayPal has so many bad stories is because people think that if you can open an account without talking to a human, you can do anything the system allows without talking to a human. Unfortunately, that means once you’ve been labelled a risk, you’re in a very difficult position, as no human is going to bat for you after you’ve already done risky things.

zachlatta 4y ago

This is a self-service account set up through the website and we don’t have any human point of contact at PayPal. Do you have any suggestions on how we might be able to get in touch with someone who could advocate for us? My email is in the OP if that helps. I know we have struggled with Wise in the past (they couldn’t process our grants to people in India), but will look into again to see if they can help.

phphphphp 4y ago
If you don’t already have relationships inside PayPal and you’re suspended, I don’t think you have much chance of finding an advocate from the outside. I can’t help, unfortunately. The best option for you would be to track down any PayPal employees who work specifically with non-profits (LinkedIn would be a good start) and hope that you can use your non-profit status to leverage some helpful treatment — but as I said in my first comment, start planning on the basis that help is not coming. Ultimately, offering financial services is more risk management than it is software: the reason PayPal has so many bad stories is because people think that if you can open an account without talking to a human, you can do anything the system allows without talking to a human. Unfortunately, that means once you’ve been labelled a risk, you’re in a very difficult position, as no human is going to bat for you after you’ve already done risky things.