How To Block Someone On PayPal (2023 Update)

PayPal is one of the world’s most popular ways to transfer money between two people, and has over 400 million users worldwide.

And unfortunately with a service that large, problems are bound to arise.

Whether you have someone harassing you or simply bombarding you with money requests, you may find yourself wishing you could block certain people from interacting with you on PayPal at all.

But is this actually possible? Can you block people someone on PayPal?

In this article, we’ll cover everything that you need to know.

Can You Block People On PayPal?

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any way to completely block people on PayPal, at least not yet.

This is quite frustrating, as it’s a basic feature people have been asking for, for years and years.

Is is believed that PayPal staff are capable of setting blocks in place, but this option isn’t available publicly for users to use at their own discretion. Therefore, it’s unknown if the ability to block people will be implemented in the future.

However, although there is no direct blocking option available, there are steps you can take to make things more difficult for whoever is bothering you.

These options may differ depending on what type of PayPal account you have, and what sorts of things this person is doing to you.

What To Do If You Have An ‘Individual’ Account

By ‘Individual’ account, we mean non-business personal accounts.

While business accounts have a bit more options at their disposal, unfortunately individual accounts have a bit less options.

The best thing you can do is simply to ignore them, if the contacts are few and far between. You may also consider disabling push notifications on your phone for PayPal, if you are receiving an excessive number and do not need notifications enabled for anything else.

However, if the contacts are particularly bothersome, it may be worth getting in touch with PayPal support.

PayPal may have policies in place to deal with issues such as spam or harassment.

If someone is bothering you, there is a chance that they may also be bothering other PayPal users.

By making PayPal aware of the issue, they may choose to look more deeply into this person’s account. If PayPal determines that they are violating any policies, they may opt to close the offending person’s account – thus ending their contact with you.

Additionally, if PayPal has any internal options to block a user from interacting with someone else, they may be able to do this for you.

What To Do If You Have A Business Account

If you have a PayPal business account, you fortunately have a few more options at your disposal.

You still aren’t able to completely block people, but you can do more to make things frustrating for the person that’s bothering you.

One thing business accounts can do for example, is to block payments. This can be done by following these steps:

1. Log in to your PayPal account.
2. Go to ‘Settings’
3. Click on ‘Selling Tools’
4. Go to the ‘Getting Paid And Managing My Risks’ section.
5. Click on ‘Update’
6. Click on ‘Block Payments’.

Within your PayPal settings, you can also find other options relating to payments and getting paid.

For example, you can block accidental payments (for example, if invoices are accidentally paid twice), or require people to send you money in your preferred currency.

In terms of invoices, you can also restrict who is able to send payments for the invoice.

What About Money Requests?

One of the most common annoyances is random people requesting money via PayPal.

This feature does have legitimate uses – for example, if somebody’s done something for you, and they give you a convenient reminder to compensate them for the service.

However, it can also be abused by people you do not know, randomly asking for money for no reason.

Unfortunately, there is no way to block money requests on PayPal, or even a way to disable the feature at all.

However, if the person requesting money is one of your PayPal contacts, you can make it more difficult by removing them as a contact.

This can be done by following these steps:

1. Log in to PayPal.
2. Go to the ‘Send and Receive’ page.
3. Click ‘Contacts’ at the top.
4. Select the contact you’d like to remove, and click on ‘Remove this contact’.

Unlinking PayPal From eBay

Sometimes, you may want to remove eBay’s access to PayPal entirely, effectively blocking the two from being connected together.

Fortunately, removing your PayPal from eBay is quite simple. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Visit PayPal’s website and sign in.
2. Hover over your name and click on ‘Account Settings’
3. Click on the ‘Money, banks and cards’ tab.
4. Scroll down to the bottom and click on ‘Set Automatic payments’, which will take you to the ‘My Preapproved Payments’ page.
5. Find eBay on your list of preapproved payments and click on it.
6. On the ‘Status’ section, click ‘Cancel’.

Note that this will only unlink eBay from collecting automatic payments, such as seller fees if you are an eBay merchant.

eBay no longer links directly with PayPal for customer accounts.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any way to directly block people on PayPal.

Although there are small steps you can take in specific situations, the vast majority of people are unable to get any sort of help with this.

If it becomes too much of an issue, we recommend getting in touch with PayPal support.

If enough people contact them about it, we can only hope that they’ll implement proper blocking functionality soon.