Paypal disruptions: Affected customers will receive credit

After a Paypal fraud filter system failed and German banks subsequently blocked Paypal transactions, the situation has now been resolved. Paypal is paying to repair the damage to its image: those affected will now receive a credit note.

Paypal writes to customers in a notification email: "Recently, Paypal experienced a temporary disruption that affected our services to you. We would like to apologize for the inconvenience caused." As a thank you, the company credited 10 euros to the Paypal account. "You don't need to do anything else – the amount should be visible in your Paypal balance shortly."

Not an attempt at fraud

In most cases, such promises that sound too good to be true are just that – however, credit notes have actually been received by those impacted. It is therefore not an attempt at fraud or a phishing attack.

All in all, this will be a not entirely cheap compensation campaign by Paypal. As part of last week's reporting, the company explained that the situation had now largely been resolved and that a large proportion of the cases impacted by the transaction blocks had already been processed. Paypal told heise online that less than five percent of customers in Germany were affected. With a monthly active user base of around 30 million customers, that is up to 1.5 million customers impacted. The campaign therefore costs the financial services provider up to 15 million euros, with a credit note of 10 euros per affected person.

At the end of August, it became known that German banks had stopped payments to PayPal. This was triggered by a security problem, which Paypal has since attributed to programming errors. Initially, it was reported that transactions worth up to 10 billion euros had been blocked. However, this figure was later not confirmed – but also not denied.

(dmk)