Merchant Guide: How Long Does It Take PayPal to Resolve a Limited Account?

After giving PayPal the information that they require to resolve your frozen account, PayPal takes an average of 3-5 days to review your case. With a potential delay, if they find out that the information you provided is lacking in any way. That’s the short of it. But, for merchants that depend on their ability to accept and process payments to keep their business afloat, we’ve broken the subject down into more detail below:

PayPal Account Limitations | Why do they happen?

“Businesses run on payments.” - Jed Morley (CEO of Platinum Payment Systems) And any ‘glitch’ in the system that allows for the transfer of funds from your customer’s bank account to yours can result in some pretty serious damages — with the severity only increasing the longer that it takes to resolve it. As a merchant, a limited PayPal account is exactly this. It’s a glitch in your system that can make or break your business. But okay, so why do they happen in the first place? Well, according to PayPal, these account limitations are there for protection. Protection that is triggered by certain activities that have been earmarked by PayPal’s algorithms to block unauthorized activity and prevent losses on both the seller and buyer’s end.

Resolving a Limited PayPal Account | Step-by-Step

PayPal is generally very upfront about limited accounts — not just in that they inform the user beforehand through email, but also in the way that they list out all the steps that you need to follow in order to resolve the limitation. Follow these steps when figuring out how to resolve your account limitations:

1. Go to PayPal’s Resolution Center. You need to be signed up for this, of course.
2. Once there, click the option for Account Limitations.
3. Doing so will bring you to a page where you can see all the steps required to get your account limitations to go away (which you can tackle once at a time.)

Note, as mentioned above, PayPal may, occasionally, require more information from you — which can cause a delay. If so, you’ll receive a notification for it on your email — the faster that you get that information to them, the less you’ll have to wait.

PayPal Account Still Limited | What next?

If you log back into your account after the allotted 3-5 days and find that there are still limitations on it, then that can mean one of two things:

• You’ve missed the request for more information (mentioned above.)
• OR they are still in the process of reviewing the information that you’ve provided.

In either case, just remember that the 3-5 day timeline for the review process is just an approximation. Depending on the complexity of your case, PayPal may take longer or shorter to address your account. To put that in perspective, when PayPal requires an account holder to change their password (and their security questions) to ensure the security of their account, the limitations are usually lifted almost immediately. An email should be sent to you to notify you once your case has been fully reviewed. If the delay is significant, you can always approach PayPal’s customer support team directly to figure out what else you can do or how much longer it will take.

Repeat PayPal Account Limitations | Why does PayPal keep limiting your account?

If you find yourself locked out of your PayPal account often, and thus unable to receive or send funds for long stretches of time. More likely than not, the issue at hand is that your business is just not compatible with PayPal’s business model. So, it might be time to consider an alternative for your payment processing In most cases, PayPal is able to cater to small businesses just fine, as well as businesses that are on the ‘low-risk’ scale. However, for businesses that are expecting a lot of growth or a business that is considered ‘high-risk’, PayPal is not as well equipped to handle any of the sudden shifts in sales volume or buyer claims that can occur. For that, you might want to look into a processor like Platinum Payment Systems (PlatPay), run by the aforementioned CEO, Jed Morley. Platinum Payment Systems, as a rule, has a closer relationship with their clients. And their long history of working in the industry is invaluable when your business needs someone to fall back on whenever big shifts in your business are happening (whether they be good or bad.)