Mysterious transaction to PayPal - RESOLVED

thewinelake66

My wife has a PayPal account that has been inactive for 3 years and had an email saying that it was going to be cancelled. That's a good thing. However, at the same time there has been a £24 charge to her bank account that doesn't show in the PayPal transactions log. PayPal support were at a loss to explain it. The transaction is currently "Pending" so they said they might be able to tell more when it completes. A slightly odd thing is that the card they have on file has expired. However, I've heard that PayPal has an arrangement with banks such that they can get the new expiry date from the banks without the client's knowledge or intervention….

So just wondering if the wise people here can advise on whether this is likely some kind of fraud, or just poor communication of some strange account cancellation fee?

So what it was, is a local dry cleaner using some PayPal contactless payment system. Instead of showing up as "PayPal - Sawston Dry Cleaners" it just said "PayPal". Coupled with the email regarding account closure, it was a suspicious combination! A shame they couldn't have called themselves "PayPal Merchant Svcs" on the statement.

born_again

Not just Pay Pal, any company can get new card details by Account updater that each card supplier has.

Transaction should be showing in her PP account. It is possible that it is a recuring payment.

eskbanker

As stated, it's too early to determine what this is - a 'pending' card transaction simply means that an authorisation has been sought and given, but doesn't necessarily indicate that money will actually change hands.

And yes, Visa and Mastercard allow merchants access to new card details.

retiredbanker1

Sounds like a subscription of some kind?

Can she look back 3 years on her paypal account to see if was paid then?

thewinelake66

Thanks both - will report back when transaction is complete. However…

It would be highly unlikely to be a subscription - she never uses PayPal, and the chances of one being set up on the day that she gets the account closure warning seems to me to be tiny.

My money is currently on a secret cancellation fee.

And, it's possible that it's just an authorisation request and won't actually be charged!

thewinelake66

Update on this is that the £24 transaction has completed. Paypal claim to be unable to trace the debit card, and suggest that we report it to the bank as an unauthorised transaction and they'll cooperate.

thewinelake66

This has been resolved!

Apparently she paid for some dry-cleaning with contactless the other day and this just came up on her online statement as "PayPal" (nothing else - why not "PayPal Merchant Svcs"?). Incredibly sloppy from them in my opinion.I know that merchants sometimes charge more for businesses to have a branded transaction with direct debit (GoCardless for example) but this is confusing - and even PayPal support should have been aware of this possibillty….

Grrr!

redux

Possible other reason, for other readers

I have a Curve credit or debit card linked to PayPal.

Some people have several card accounts linked to Curve. Presumably they once in a while inadvertently use a different one than they would have wished