Pagegangster recieved an email from PayPal some weeks ago requiring us to send document proving the existence of our address and CEO. The reason for the email was not that our company is suspicious in terms of account transactions, but rather the money amount we receive. This is OK as PayPal is only responding to an EU law created to avoid money laundering, and I read the email thinking that this was a good thing. I’m all for stopping money laundering, but I don’t think the rules you have to follow on PayPal is enough.
As a respond to the email I scanned and submitted our CEOs driver license and a sheet with the pagegangster company information sent by the danish tax office, SKAT. This should be fairly good documentation, but it turned out they also needed a scanned version of a utility bill, but let’s hold it for a second. Look at this snip from the mail:
Submit a copy of a current utility bill or financial statement. The bill or statement must show your name and address exactly as they appear in your PayPal account, and must have been issued within the last six months. Please ensure that the address displayed on the document is registered to the PayPal account. Please note that we cannot accept payslips or private trading invoices. We cannot accept handwritten documentation. We are unable to accept any documentation sourced online. Any document received must have originally been mailed to your physical street address. Any document received must be addressed to the name (or business name) registered on the account. We cannot accept a document displaying a PO Box address.
Look at the bold part. How would they know that? How can they see the difference between a scanned original letter and a printed-and-scanned version of a document sourced online? For most part of the documents I handle at pagegangster there isn’t any difference from the letter I receive online and the one sent to our address. And why shouldn’t documents sourced online be valid? The rule only have once effect: People will use 10 minutes to print and scan their documents.
The funny thing is that PayPal didn’t accept our first application so maybe they really can tell the difference. The second part of documents I sent was just scanned bills, and finally our account was approved. Buf if I worked at PayPal I wouldn’t have accepted the documents in the first place. I scanned our office rent, but the authenticity if the document can’t be established at PayPal. Our land lord have just created the bill in word.. How can PayPal tell the difference between my word and our land lords?
I don’t think it would be very hard to get an PayPal account approved with a fake name and address. The hardest part would be to fake the drivers license, but the one I sent was in such poor quality that I guess it could be done without spending more than a couple of hours.
I really hope PayPal change they way the do business in this section as it just not enough to be anymore than anoying.