Quick PayPal tip I discovered today

masonic

These have been around for a long time. They are useful to online services with some sort of "freemium" model as you can buy things seamlessly without having to go through an authorisation step, so you are more likely to spend on impulse. I have set one or two up willingly in the past, and cancelled them when no longer needed. It is a better system than a continuous payment authority on a card, which can be quite difficult to detect and stop.

The key to things like this Paypal autopay system and direct debits / CPAs is to regularly check and prune those no longer needed, and look out for small-print authorising their use when you think you are making a one-off payment.

Jordec

Just to clarify, I had 14 of these automatic payments on my account (I checked after PayPal took the £10,500 without permission). My automatic payments were set up for one off purchases, American Golf, an ITV competition (not subscription), Just Eat, Temu, a fabric shop Just Fabrics, Go Fund Me, Virgin Money (a charity donation), Facebook, all one off purchases or donations, plus a few small shops. None of these had taken money after the initial purchase, but had they been hacked, they could have emptied my account and PayPal wouldn’t have told me until after the fact! It’s not good enough. 

Just an update on my husband’s account, the bank refunded the initial £7,000 taken, then PayPal refunded the £87.90 purchase and the £3499 that they were showing as a debt. It took PayPal 4 full weeks to refund this, after appeals upon appeals, emails, calls, formal complaints etc. After 4 weeks of fighting to get it back, we got no apology from them for setting up an automatic payment without any approval at all, no explanation, no compensation for the upset of having our bank emptied in minutes.