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What Are the Maximum & Minimum PayPal Limits & How to Prevent Them?

What Are the Maximum & Minimum PayPal Limits & How to Prevent Them?

The online payment giant PayPal is a well-known, useful electronic transfer platform. Especially for those who run online businesses. It also comes in handy if you need to pay employees over the Internet instead of through traditional checks.

But like many other payment processors and electronic wallets, PayPal has transfer limits to protect its users. Transfer limits:

  • Prevent someone unauthorized from sending too much money in a single transaction
  • Prevent people from sending too much money because of a typo
  • Require business owners to go through multiple identity verification steps to ensure trust

These transfer limits can be annoying at first. But they can easily be lifted by verifying your identity with PayPal, linking a bank account, and more. Let’s explore what these maximum and minimum PayPal limits are and how you can prevent them from affecting your business.

Here’s What We’ll Cover:

PayPal Minimum and Maximum Limits for Normal Transactions

Verifying Your Account

PayPal Instant Transfer Limits for Debit Cards

PayPal Instant Transfer Limits for Linked Bank Accounts

How to Lift PayPal’s Instant Transfer Maximum Sending Limit

PayPal Minimum and Maximum Limits for Normal Transactions

Normal PayPal accounts have a minimum transaction amount of $0.01 and a maximum transaction amount of $4,000. You can also withdraw up to $500 from a bank account per month. People who don’t have a PayPal account can also send one-time payments of up to $4,000 to another person.

But, you can lift these limits by verifying your account. When you verify your account with PayPal, you provide the platform with more information about your identity. This eliminates security risks. Once you are verified, you can send up to $60,000 per transaction. You’ll also have no limits on how much money you can send from your account overall.

Small business owners and freelancers should verify their accounts as quickly as possible. Having a higher maximum limit and/or withdrawal limit lets you use PayPal as a more reliable payment method. Freelancers, additionally, can accept payments more quickly when verified.

Verifying Your Account

You can verify your PayPal account by:

  • Applying for and being approved for PayPal Credit
  • Linking a bank account, debit card, or credit card

For many business owners, linking a bank account is both useful and the easiest way to get verified. To link a bank account to your PayPal Wallet and verify your identity:

  • Enter your PayPal profile
  • Click “summary” and confirm your email address and/or phone number if you haven’t already done so
  • Click “Wallet” and “Link a bank” in the top left-hand corner
  • You can then enter your bank account information, including its location, name, routing number, and account number
  • After providing this information, PayPal will make two small deposits from your PayPal into your bank account
  • A verification email will be sent once the deposits are made in a few business days
  • Identify the two PayPal payments (usually just a few cents each) and enter the deposit amounts in your PayPal account
  • PayPal will then grant you “Verified” status, lifting your transaction limit

PayPal Instant Transfer Limits for Debit Cards

PayPal also offers an “Instant Transfer” service. This service allows you to move money from PayPal to an eligible bank or debit card account within 30 minutes. You can also accept money quickly using this feature.

PayPal’s limits for debit card payments are:

  • $1.00 minimum transfer amount
  • $5,000 maximum transfer amount per transaction
  • $5,000 maximum transfer amount per day
  • $5,000 maximum transfer amount per week
  • $15,000 maximum transfer amount per month

PayPal Instant Transfer Limits for Linked Bank Accounts

PayPal’s Instant Transfer limit for banks is simple: a flat maximum of $25,000 per transaction. This amount is significantly higher than the limits for debit cards. This is because users must link their bank account to PayPal to take advantage of this feature. Thus, their identities are already verified.

How to Lift PayPal’s Instant Transfer Maximum Sending Limit

You can’t lift the maximum transaction limits for PayPal’s Instant Transfer feature. PayPal keeps these restrictions in place due to the instant nature of the transactions. This is to protect business owners from losing too much money in the case of fraud or theft

However, business owners can make instant transfers as often as they like when using a linked bank account. The only limitation is on a per transaction basis, not overall.

Key Takeaways

PayPal’s minimum and maximum transaction limitations can be frustrating and inconvenient to deal with. But they serve a valuable role in ensuring the security of PayPal’s users and any linked bank accounts. These limits are easy enough to lift and business owners should verify their identities to allow faster transactions.

Enjoyed this guide? Find more on our small business resource guide.


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