If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, and there’s ANY evidence of this, SHUT DOWN YOUR ACCOUNT AND USE YOUR REAL INFORMATION FOR A NEW ONE IF YOU NEED TO.
Sharing this here because I know this will affect a LOT of artists here.
PLEASE share this, this is super urgent and I don’t want any of you losing your funds.
Seriously, this is not a joke or scam. Check the comments of that Medium article, or the Reddit comments.
Apparently PayPal will try to re-ban you if you use the same cards or whatnot, so if you need an alternative, try Google Wallet. (Because Google won’t let a damn industry go untouched.)
If you see your work as more as a business, try Stripe.
LAST REBLOG.
BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING IMPORTANT.
Okay so this case needs a little bit more of explanation because there’s no need to panic
Are you calm now? Yes? Good.
Now listen:
The first thing that you need to realise is that you not being 18 is a serious legal issue not only for PayPal, but for ANY OTHER FIRM PROVIDING THIS KIND OF SERVICE. This includes the “alternatives” like Google Wallet and others. It is clearly stated in their TOS (which you are supposed to get familiar with before using their service). Therefore, if you made an account before being 18 then you, and let me repeat that, YOU are in the wrong here, not them.
“But nobody reads these” my dude this is LAW, REAL CORPORATIONS and REAL MONEY we’re talking about here. It’s more than obvious that they won’t fuck around when it comes to the legal measures. Should any outside entity learn about your little lie it can result in something more serious that this, drag both PayPal and you down. You gotta realise that in real life rules exist for a reason.
Now to the money part:
To tone down the stress I’m gonna say it right now that your money is safe.
This situation happened to me as I made an account when I was 17, so believe me when I tell you I know first hand what I am talking about. After a year of using it (so when I was already 18) PayPal asked me to see my ID to verify some info. After the verification it turned out I made the account when I was underage so they had to “shut it down” WHICH IS A VERY POOR WAY TO DESCRIBE IT.
The accounts are not being “shut down” and your money doesn’t “disappear” or whatever – PayPal blocks the option to send or withdraw money so your account is simply out of use. As we learned before, you broke their rules so they HAVE TO do something about it.
If you had read that oh so heart gripping story from one of OP’s links you would see this screenshot attached to it, which is PayPal informing them about their situation:
Oh? But wait!! Could it be???? That half of the email was cut off?????
In the second part of the email PayPal politely informs you that the problem can be easily solved by making a new account. Are you seeing that last sentence in the screenshot? “To continue using our service please open a new PayPal account”? Yeah, that.
Then, the email informs you that you will need to send PayPal a message from the new account that you would like your money transferred to the new account. Basically, you message them “hi this is my new account, my old one was XYZ, could you please transfer my money to this account?” and that’s it.
The money will be on your new account within 5 days MAX.
In conclusion: No money lost, PayPal solved their legal issue and you have a new, fresh, bombing legal account. No one goes to jail, everyone is happy. No fees, no nothing. As if you had never crossed any lines or broken the law.
TL;DR YOUR MONEY IS SAFE
There’s a reason why PayPal is one of the most reliable services out there that so many other companies decide to trust. When you’re buying something online and you have the PayPal option accessible, why do you think it’s there? Because that’s just how it is? No. At one point the companies had to struck a deal, that’s why you can pay safely. And let me tell you, no company will skip reading the rules nor will they decide to trust a shady firm. Companies are real deals that operate under millions of regulations and are directly exposed to law (just like you tbh) and that’s why they’re strict about their rules. And you should be too.
Ps. If currently you are under 18 with PayPal account, don’t stress it ok? They won’t try to verify you until you start dealing tons of money or after a certain time period. But by then you will be 18, hopefully. So, chillex my dude it’s okay.
