PayPal is an online payment platform that makes online payments as easily accessible as possible. Now that payment is so simple and only a few clicks away, it’s pretty common for people to press a few wrong buttons. So how to stop a PayPal payment from going through when you’ve made a mistake?
The good news is that PayPal’s customer service is pretty reasonable, and if you do make a mistake when it comes to the spelling of the recipient’s account or the amount of money you wish to transfer, you can always either cancel the payment if possible or put in a refund request for payments that can’t be canceled.
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How Does PayPal Work – Can You Stop a Payment?
PayPal is a widely known and used online payment platform that has been active ever since 1998. That’s a long time of people transferring money online and making mistakes. People have become so comfortable using the app that they could pay a bill with their eyes closed. This is exactly why people don’t think twice when transferring money and they end up making mistakes. Those mistakes usually occur when entering the recipient’s account information or when entering the exact amount of money you want to transfer.
Of course, we all make mistakes and can be careless. But that doesn’t mean you should lose your hard-earned money because you were momentarily careless. PayPal is aware of that, which is why its customer service team made sure to provide its users with different ways of getting their money back in case of a misunderstanding.
You Can Only Stop a Payment From Happening In Certain Cases
The good news is that you can stop a PayPal payment, the bad news is thatyou can’t stop it in all cases. The first thing you should be aware of is that you can never stop a completed payment. You can only stop payments from going through when they are Pending or Unclaimed.
Pending payments are the ones that have a certain issue that won’t allow them to go through. This issue, in almost all cases, is the fact that you entered the wrong name for the recipient’s account and tried to send money to an invalid account. For example, you tried to send money to Johnny__8 and meant to send it to Johnny_8. If the other account doesn’t exist, the payment will simply be in the Pending status and it will never go through and spend your money. However, if you typed in the wrong email address or the wrong account, and that account exists, your payment will go through and be completed, so it won’t be possible to cancel it.
The other situation when you can cancel your payment is when they are in Unclaimed status. PayPal has the option to manually choose to accept or deny payments. If you choose this option, it means that money won’t automatically go into your account when someone sends you money – you will have to manually accept or deny it. So, if your payment is still in Unclaimed status, it means that the recipient hasn’t yet accepted it, and you have time to cancel your transaction if you want to. But once the recipient has accepted it, you can’t cancel the payment anymore. You should also know that PayPal automatically refunds your Pending or Unclaimed payments after 30 days, so you will probably get your money back even if you don’t act fast.
How to Stop a PayPal Payment From Going Through
If possible, canceling a payment is really simple and straightforward, there is no fuss involved, and it will be done in about two seconds. For starters, log into your account and click the Activity button in your menu, where you can see all your most recent transactions. If that transaction is suitable for cancellation, there will be a Cancel button right next to it. Simply click it once, then click Cancel Payment to confirm your intentions, and voila – your payment is officially canceled. Just keep in mind that you can’t cancel a payment that has fully gone through and been completed. The problem is that most payments are completed almost momentarily, so you need to act fast if you notice a problem.
What Can You Do In Case Your PayPal Payment Can’t Be Canceled?
Unfortunately, you won’t always be able to cancel your payments. So, what can you do if you made a mistake and want your money back? Don’t stress over it, there are ways to get it – PayPal has thought of everything. You can ask for a refund within a period of 180 days after the transaction has been completed. The best-case scenario is that you accidentally sent the money to someone you know, in which case you can simply ask them to refund you directly. In case you don’t know the person or the person is refusing to refund you the money, you can file a dispute in PayPal’s resolution center. You should also know that it takes a couple of days to process the refund, but in some cases, card returns can even take up to 30 days.
Be Careful When Using PayPal and Transfering Money
While PayPal might be just another app on your phone, it’s still an app that transfers and uses your very real hard-earned money. That is why it’s so important to be careful when using it. You could easily make a mistake and lose valuable money, especially since the transaction limit is set pretty high ($10,000). So my advice would be to always double-check, even triple-check, every transaction. Make sure the comma is placed in the right spot in the amount, so you don’t end up sending $10,000 instead of $1,000, and that you’re sending the money to the right person – check to see if you’ve written and selected the right account.