Can't Get Paid Via PayPal

     In Japan, we still use banks for a lot of things including transfers between accounts as a means to make payments or receive payments for work, but for those of us trying to do more international work and online work, that might not be as easy as a possibility. 

     Decades ago, PayPal in America started doing this kind of a job specifically in conjunction with sites like eBay to protect the sellers and buyers from exchanging information that could be sensitive like credit card numbers and the like. Still Paypal internationally is accepted at tens of thousands of retailers. However, an American paypal account that connects to an American bank has significantly different options than a Japanese paypal account. 

     When I first got my Japanese paypal account in 2016, I had to sign up with the website and then receive a note verified in the mail to prove my identity. After that, I could use my Japanese PayPal account to accept payments from students and shop online. Nowadays, there are many more successful similar options in Japan like Paypay, and the number of retailers that accept Paypal from a Japanese account online is down to 30 according to a search I ran through their website.

     The one student that was paying me through this account quit years ago and the most use it has been since then was to receive a monetary gift from a family member last month.

     I was able to send some money to my American PayPal account to use online but hadn't thought to send it all, which I am now regretting.

     When I tried to use the less than half of the remaining cash at one of the few online retailers that accepts Japanese PayPal, I received this notice.

     Unaware of any reason for this limitation, I went to the help chat where a robot told me in Japanese to check the FAQs, which did not help. One part of the website suggests turning off the limitations on your profile but there is no actual way to do that.

     I tried to send the remainder to my other account and got a similar message. I even tried to send as little as 200 yen, and still got this message.

     After all of that, the last idea I had was to try to send it to my Japanese bank account, a process which I was reluctant to try again. Previous attempts only resulted in the sent money disappearing from my account for a few days before reappearing short a few hundred yen of sundry fees. Hopefully it works better this time, since they've had years to figure out how to do something the American version was doing before I moved to Japan.

     By the end of the months, I'm closing my Japanese PayPal account since it has revealed itself to be utterly useless. I recommend not getting an account with them and closing any account with them you may have. If my money doesn't come through to my bank account, I'll be forced to burn a day off on the phone, fighting with whatever kind of a help desk I can find on their website.

     Japanese PayPal is garbage. Don't use them. You have better options.