I mentioned earlier that I had some troubles with PayPal. While registration is free, it is only possible to send about $500 USD without adding and confirming a credit card. No problem – I added one, but when tried to confirm was asked to fax a number of documents to PayPal office. Which I refused to do.
Since then I’ve been using direct credit card payments. Until recently I wanted to purchase something from a small shop which only accepted PayPal. I though, OK, I’ll just use the credit card via PayPal and and they won’t have to link the transaction to my account. Wrong. I had to be logged into PayPal.
So I created myself another account and tried to use it. PayPal didn’t allow me to add the same credit card, complaining that it is already in use by another account. I go back and remove it from my old account. Now it was added OK. I paid for all the stuff I wanted and then tried my luck once more – I asked for credit card verification sequence.
If you don’t know how it works, here is a quick summary. PayPal charges your credit card with a small amount (EUR 1.50 in my case). The transaction registered by your bank has “XXXXPAYP” in the description, where XXXX are four digits. PayPal asks to enter those digits in the verification form, thus confirming that you are entitled to use that credit card.
I followed the procedure and tada – it all worked out. I don’t know why it couldn’t have been done the first time. It’s the same card after all…