privacy concerns when receiving money from paypal from strangers?
You'll need to check PayPal's terms of service for that first question. I would imagine you could, as my wife and I both have personal PayPal accounts listed at the same address. When you receive money, the senders will only see the (full) name on your account, the amount, and the transaction ID. If you set up a business account, the name on your account will be replaced with the company name. Your mailing address will not be made visible. Yes, PayPal provides an export option of your transaction history. For reference: If your volume greater than $20,000 across 200 or more transactions, then they'll be issuing a 1099-K form, anyway. That depends on the payment method. Bank transfers are instant, where cards require a settlement delay. PayPal provides buyer protection, so I'd be very dutiful in logging all of your work done to provide proof of completion, in case someone disputes a payment. Disputes can take place up to 45 days from the date of the transaction. Chargebacks can take place 120 days or more after the transaction (depends on the card network).
Paypal UK has a page here: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/seller-protection Basically they don't just take the seller's word for it, there is a resolution process.  The biggest thing you can do is make sure that you deliver it in a way that requires signature. All the items listed are required for International Wire transfer. In wrong hands this info along with other info can cause issues. Most of the times you trust the person with this info and hence is less cause to worry. So the key is if you don't trust, don't give the details. Use alternatives like; Best open an account for receiving funds. Share the details, once the funds are received move it to an account where the details have not been shared. Alternatively paypal or other such services can help. Another reason to think it's a scam: fake paypal email notifications are a thing.  I've seen one that was quite convincing (but it wasn't mine to properly analyse or report), so the intial payment may be a fake from another account belonging to the scammer, and you've just transferred money to the scammer. The fake email can include links to log in to a fake paypal website, which can be quite convincing as the mark will give the login details which can be used to scrape data.  Links not going to where they say is the giveaway here. "It can be a money laundering scheme. The stranger gives you cash for free at first, then proposes to give you more but this time asks you to ""spend"" a fraction of it (like 80%). So on his side the money comes from a legitimate source.  So you do it because after all you get to keep the rest of it and it is ""free"" money. But you are now involved in something illegal.  Having money for which you cannot tell the origin is also something highly suspicious. You will not pay tax on it, and the fiscal administration of your country might give you a fine. Customs might also be able to confiscate the money if they suspect it comes from an illegal source." The simplest way to handle this would be to buy money orders, make them out to the charities, and leave your name off them.  Money orders don't require you to put your name on them, just the name of whoever they're being paid to.  You can mail them with no return address as well if you're sure you have the charity's proper mailing address.   This way you can still feel good about giving and leave no trace of who you are for anyone to use for future marketing. I hope this helps. Good luck! You have not indicate your country of residence or that of your friend. The fees would depend on this.   Normally within US transfer of funds between paypal acounts is free. Transfering Outside there is a small charge. Further if when you withdraw the money to your bank account there would be a small fee. Refer to When it's free and when there's a fee on Paypal for more details. Yes, I've done this. Just added the borderless account into Paypal as a new bank account and the money has now showed up in my borderless account. I used the ACH Routing Number for my USD account. This sounds like a scam. Did they email you out of the blue to offer you this 'job', by any chance, and you'd never heard of them before? That's an incredibly large red flag in and of itself. While I don't know quite what the scam is likely to be, here's how I would suggest it might work: Other variants are possible - say using a cheque rather than PayPal, or having Person A be the scammer as well. But this being a legitimate transaction is very unlikely. "I haven't seen anything specifically about how PayPal operates, but my guess is that they maintain relationships with banks in many countries via affiliates, and they settle the money transfers internally within the PayPal system. You basically have two types of bank transfers (there are others as well that I'm not getting into): I think PayPal is a hybrid -- they send and receive money using drafts to keep costs down, and manage the international stuff by operating a proprietary network. So if you send money from Indonesia to the US, you pay ""PayPal Indonesia"", who then tells ""PayPal USA"" to issue funds to your recipient. So they are cheaper than a wire, faster than a check, but limited in terms of transaction size and some other factors." "You're potentially in very deep water here. You don't know who this person is that you're dealing with.  Before you'd even met him, he just gave you his banking info, seemingly without a second thought.   You have no idea what the sources of his money are, so what happens if the money is stolen or otherwise illegal?  If it is determined that you used any of that money, you'll be on the hook to return it, at the very least.  Who knows what the legal ramifications are either? So it sounds like you began spending his money before you had any kind of written agreement in place?  Doesn't that seem odd to you to have someone just so trusting as to not even ask for that? Was the source of the email about the $2500 from PayPal, or from him or his advisor?  PayPal always sends you a notice directly when funds are received into your account, and even if they were going to put a temporary hold on them for whatever reason (sometimes they do that), it would still show up in your account. I would HIGHLY (can I be more emphatic?) advise you not to go anywhere NEAR his bank account until or unless you can absolutely verify who he is, where his money comes from, and what the situation is. If you start dipping into his account, whether you think you're somehow entitled to the money or not, he could cry foul and have you arrested for theft. This is a very odd situation, and for someone who says he's normally cautious and skeptical, you sure let your guard down here when you started spending his money without making any serious effort to confirm his bona fides. Just because he passes himself off as smart and the ""doctor type"" doesn't mean squat.  The very best scammers can do that (ever see the movie ""Catch Me If You Can"", based on a true story?), so you have no basis for knowing he's anything at all. I am thoroughly confused as to why you'd just willfully start using his money without knowing anything about him.  That's deeply disconcerting, because you've opened yourself up to a world of potential criminal and civil liability if this situation goes south. If this guy was giving you money as an investment in your business and you instead used some of that money for your own personal expenses then you could land in very serious trouble for co-mingling of funds.  Even if he told you it was okay, it doesn't sound like there's anything in writing, so he could just as easily deny giving you permission to use the money that way and have you charged with embezzlement. You need to step back, take a deep breath, stop using his money, and contact a lawyer for advice.  Every attorney will give you a free consultation, and you need to protect yourself here. Be careful, my friend.  If this makes you suspicious then you need to listen to that voice in your head and find a way to get out of this situation." "It's anonymous/automated. They don't know who you are, just that customer x1a bought y. If your name isnt given to employees ""your"" privacy isnt being volated because the dont know its ""you.""  I imagine the government justifies their intrusions on our digital privacy the same way." "From personal experience of having been abroad for a while for work, I found the simplest method to be to Paypal it to myself from one country to the other. Yes, you incur a transaction fee - but it was always less expensive than ""real"" bank fees for me. Also - if you use a bank that has offices in both countries, adding an authorized user with a debit card and having them visit the bank every X often and making a withdrawal is a viable route." I don't see a way that this would make matters worse than just giving them the credit card info... Except that it would make abusing the card easier at some other site (or the bank) if they have a similar (unreasonably weak) security-by-photo test. Still, I'd strongly recommend you use a separate card for this so you can cancel it without disrupting your other credit card uses.  (Actually I'd strongly recommend not doing business with folks who have already demonstrated questionable ethics, but you seem to have made that decision.) Can a third party deposit to my account? (Say I'm selling something and I ask him/her to just deposit the payment to my account? No, but PayPal. Remember that shares represent votes at the shareholders' meeting. If share price drops too far below the value of that percentage of the company, the company gets bought out and taken over. This tends to set a minimum share price derived from the company's current value. The share price may rise above that baseline if people expect it to be worth more in the future, or drop s bit below if people expect awful news. That's why investment is called speculation. If the price asked is too high to be justified by current guesses, nobody buys. That sets the upper limit at any given time. Since some of this is guesswork, the market is not completely rational. Prices can drop after good news if they'd been inflated by the expectation of better news, for example. In general, businesses which don't crash tend to grow.  Hence the market as a whole generally trends upward if viewed on a long timescale. But there's a lot of noise on that curve; short term or single stocks are much harder to predict.