THE GUIDE TO UNVERIFIED PAYPALS

The Guide to Unverified PayPals

Everybody knows that PP sucks. They go sticking their noses where they shouldn't. Who CARES if you got your money from a Russian mobster or a shady brown man who wears a turban. Right? Well these are the exact reasons PP has to be so strict, because a few years back PP was THE payment system to use for criminals. But you TBNancys, who are just small time and 100% legit, can still play nice with PP without handing over any personal info whatsoever.

1. PP doesn't care who you are if you send/receive small payments. PP just wants its transaction fees. They'll only ask as many questions as they need to which is dictated by corporate policy/the law. However since nobody knows what their internal policies are, it's hit and miss The general rule here is keep it below $100 a week, both in and out. Don't start receiving large amounts of money with brand new accounts. Small amounts are okay. If you just need your PP to receive GPT payments and buy various things on forums, you're okay.

2. You don't need to "verify" your account to use it. There are two ways to move money out of your PP. Either withdraw it to your bank acc or spend it. If you have a bank account, great. You don't really need this guide. With an unverified PP, your only option is to spend it. Buy something online that has a good resale value and resell it on craigslist. If you have friends who want to buy stuff online but don't have / don't want a PP, then offer to be a proxy. They give you cash and you place the order. If you know someone you trust that has a verified PP, send the money to them and let them withdraw it to their bank and give you the cash. The possibilities are endless.

3. But Yoko, unverified PP have a spending limit of $0. What do? This is easily fixed: add a credit card or debit card. It will raise your spending limit to $2000. That's way more than any of you will ever need. Since you're reading this guide, I'm assuming you don't have a bank account, and thus no real debit card or credit card. You have three options. Get a prepaid debit card from a drugstore, buy a virtual credit card, or buy a virtual bank account. Both the prepaid card and vcc are okay, but the prepaid is cheaper. I don't recommend a vba and I'll explain why later.

4. Enter the Prepaid Debit Card You can go to any Walgreens, Riteaid, CVS, Simon Mall, and a bunch of other stores and buy a non-reloadable prepaid debit card. These are great because they're issued by a bank and not just the store so they're good anywhere. They are branded Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, etc. The smallest you can usually get is $20 + $5 fee. First read the instructions that come with the card on how to register it. Make sure you use the same address as your Paypal. If it's a Vanilla Visa then make sure it's the same zip code. Then all you need to do is go to your PP account, add the debit card, and then look at your online statement to see the "code" that PP sent you. Follow PP's instructions to enter the code, and voila your PP spending limit is raised to $2000. PP charges $1.95 to your card, but once you enter the code it deposits it back into your PP. From personal experience, using a Vanilla Visa gift card to raise the spending limit takes about 10 minutes, much shorter than the 2-3 days PP estimates. Although you need to plunk down ~$25 on the card, you're really only losing $5 because the other $20 is yours to spend on whatever, wherever.

6. Virtual Credit Card These work the same way as the prepaid debit cards except they have next to no value on them. They only have enough to cover the charge from PP. You basically order a VCC, and your vendor gives you the card details, not a physical card. You enter them into PP and within a few days your vendor will e-mail you the PP code. In my opinion this isn't as good as the Vanilla Visa because it's more expensive. Plus there's the risk of getting scammed because you're adding a third party to this whole mess.

7. Virtual Bank Accounts I don't like these at all. They work like the VCC's in that you order one and your vendor will give you the account details to put into PP. Then within a few days the vendor gets back to you with the numbers PP wants. The only problem is that this account is not yours to keep. It is closed as soon as you are done verifying your PP. And it doesn't even make you completely safe from being limited. You will STILL be at risk. Also, since you don't own the account, you can't withdraw to it. Why spend twice the money if you can't withdraw? Sure you can withdraw by check, but that's a HUGE red flag to PP that you used someone else's bank account. Why else would someone request a check that takes forever to mail AND clear in the bank when wire transfers are much quicker? It's left in there to catch people off guard. Also, I've seen something troubling. Some unscrupulous VBA vendors have been opening accounts at Metabank. Metabank is THE biggest issuer of prepaid cards in the USA, and PP knows this. Any bank account at Metabank used to verify a PP sends a red flag to their monitoring systems. The way that Metabank accounts are usually opened is through a reloadable prepaid card. A lot of them come with routing numbers so they can take ACH/direct deposit payments from employers. So to anybody who doesn't know better they look like a real bank account. PP will contact Metabank to see if your account is real or just one on a card. Metabank cards/accounts used to work for verifying PP, but not anymore. One of tutorials you will see time and time again on the internet is to use Netspend. Don't do this. Just don't.

8. Virtual Bank Accounts that come with a Prepaid Card that's NOT with Metabank However, Metabank isn't the only bank that issues reloadable prepaid cards. There are other reloadable prepaid cards that come with direct deposit/ACH capabilities. Do your research if you want to try this. Be forewarned though. They require Social Security Numbers and they WILL verify if it's real. These can be used to verify your PP AND withdraw from it. Plus, they work in ATM's if you need cash. Check the fine print of the card to see what bank issues it. Metabank = bad; Other banks = okay. Examples of Metabank (BAD) cards = Greendot, Netspend.

9. I've reached my $2000 limit. What do I do? Make a new PP. Really. Just make a new PP, add a new credit/debit card and you're good to go. Just make sure before hand that you change your IP, clear your browser's cache and cookies, and CLEAR YOUR FLASH COOKIES. Better yet, use Flashblock. Why? The PP site has a hidden flash widget that can be used to store flash cookies on your computer. These don't get cleared when you clear your browser's cookies. You have to go to Macromedia's Control Panel to delete them. If you're making enough money to be spending 2k online, another $5 for a gift card won't matter much

10. My thoughts on foreign PP I don't think you should register your PP as from a country different from where your IP address is. Why? As soon as you start doing any medium-size transactions, it's going to get limited. There are only two reasons someone would register a foreign PP: they're actually from that country but are away for a short time OR they're trying to get around PP's regulations. Once you get limited, you're going to be SOL. You can however get a VPN that originates from whatever country you want to register it from. However it needs to be a private/dedicated IP address. If you want to take this risk, you can, but I'm not going to recommend it. Also, shared IP addresses will flag your account as high-risk. In PP's eyes it looks like one person is hacking multiple accounts.

Countries where unverified PP can receive AND send money without CC or bank account: Canada ($3000), Germany (thanks timertrainer), New Zealand.
Countries to avoid: Croatia, Japan.

Some examples of what the cards look like.

2013 update: My PayPal Account is still unverified after 3 years, still going strong. I've done thousands of dollars of transactions with it.