Paypal has quietly switched their age-old policy of requiring the use of your Paypal balance when you have one. We can now use a credit card or bank account to pay even when there is a balance in the Paypal account.
The new policy applies to eBay purchases and all other Paypal purchases too.
This is quite a shift for a company who was always adamant about pushing us toward using the balance, and not a credit or debit card. We first saw an inkling that this was going to happen back in July with the Visa/Paypal partnership, which followed up sometime later with a Mastercard/Paypal partnership as well.
Previously, the workaround was to withdraw all funds from Paypal before making the purchase; once there were no funds in the account we could proceed to use a card. But this was a pain and didn’t always work out for various reasons (e.g. you hit your monthly Paypal withdrawal limit).
I’m quite surprised that this isn’t being reported on anywhere since it’s a major enhancement for big Paypal users, especially those who receive payments via Paypal (e.g. eBay sellers).
Update: A couple of readers note that it doesn’t seem to be working properly, and it ends up pulling from the balance in the end. Let us know if it works for you.
Hat tip to @vintantran and Milesperday
