Contents
The Offer
- Paypal is offering some people up to $300 (30,000 points) for making qualifying direct deposits into their Paypal account.
- Get $10 for every $500 in direct deposits, up to $300 total (that would be with $15,000 in direct deposits).
Poke around the Paypal app (maybe the website too?) to find the offer. If you open the app > click on rewards block under your paypal balance > click on ways to earn, you might see it as one of the featured offers. Or you can go to Accounts > Rewards. Or hamburger menu > Rewards.
Max reward limited to first 20,000 customers.
Our Verdict
It’s pretty cool to be able to get $300 in bonuses without even having to open an account. $15k in direct deposits is steep, and hopefully regular transfers count too (I don’t have the fine print in front of me). I wasn’t even aware that a regular Paypal account has a routing/account number, but apparently that’s a thing.
Reader Matt sent this one in a couple of weeks back and today reader TDD sent this one in with a further expiration date, so they seem to be slowly targeting people for this offer.
Got my DD today (the real one from my employer) and see the message: “We’ve veryfying your Direct Deposit(s) qualify for this offer. This review may take up to 14 days”. Anyone sees the same thing?..
I purchased a $5,100 one month T-Bill from Treasury Direct last month. It just deposited to PayPal and I received a “You got paid early with PayPal Direct Deposit” e-mail.
It appears I already immediately have 5,000 ($50) points pending. Really wish my offer was for more than $50 but I’ll take it.
Thanks for the suggestion for Treasury Direct.
Eric 🔗
I’m glad to help. I hope that PP gives me a 2nd chance at a DD promo! 😀
I too got the 5000/$50 promo. I called to see if I could get upgraded to one of the better offers. No luck. Still considering if I want to do the original offer.
I would advise you to do it. I had either a $50 or $100 offer on my account several months ago. I didn’t try it as I figured that only “real” DDs would work. By the time someone told me that TrD worked, it was too late and my offer had vanished. No offer has ever returned. Learn from my mistake!
It seems there are other bank bonuses out there for less than a $5000 deposit that would yield better returns. BoA only requires a $2k deposit and yields a $300 bonus. Just saying…
That’s why you do both…
I was about to write a similar message but you beat me to the punch. 😉
DP.
Amex Biz Checking counts a DD. Got a email the same day as the transfer from Paypal saying “You got paid early with PayPal Direct Deposit”
Regular transfer or payee?
Schwab doesn’t qualify as a Direct Deposit.
Found worked for me. I was working on the $125 bonus and decided to try it with a $500 payment (non-1099 ACH). Got Paypal points immediately after DD hit the paypal account – but I have been a stable PayPal customer for a while, others report pending points. YMMV
Immediate vs. pending points is a bit of a mystery. My first real employer DD had the points available immediately. The second, two weeks later from the same employer, had pending points. Somebody else reported seeing something similar earlier in this discussion.
Also, I remember somebody else asking earlier… yes, they do keep a running total. For instance, for the 500 points on every $500 offer, if your deposit is $1250, you’ll get 1000 points for the $1000. The extra $250 will roll into the next deposit, so if it’s also $1250, you’ll get 1500 points on that one.
Just a fair warning to anyone who might be considering this. I was going to do this but read someone’s comment here about PayPal deactivating people’s accounts for no reason and holding funds, so I was going to do 15X $1000 using Wise, and pulling out each time before setting up the next transfer. Firstly, Wise does code as direct deposit. But, I woke up this morning to my account deactivated. No recourse, no human to speak to, nothing! I sent an email to let them know what my recent activities have been and reiterate that I have not violated any of their policies. I also made a complaint with BBB with the same information. Within 10 hours an email came to say they reactivated my account. I think I am going to give this a miss. Too much time spent and too much agony for just $150.
It seems that you are implying that your PayPal account, rather than your Wise account, was deactivated. Is that correct?
How many transfers did you do before you had a problem? Or you didn’t do any transfers?
Anyway, your plan of 15 deposits & withdrawals doesn’t sound much safer.
DP: Ally push to PayPal failed to trigger points.
So far, only a true DD from my work has worked.
I got a $150 offer. I did 2 different Chase Biz Payroll ACH transfers and earned the $150. It took 2 weeks for the pending rewards to be deposited after the ACH arrived. No issues.
I’ve tried to add the paypal/bancorp routing & acct numbers to a few banks, and they do this small code deposits. But they don’t show up in “activity” 5 days now, am I looking to the right place?
finally they’ve appeared together today in the “Activity”, maybe they’ve fixed something.
Wonder if the deal has ended. At the beginning of the deal I could redeem my bonus the same day that my paychecks were deposited. Lately they’ve been pending and it’s been 16 days and still pending. So maybe no more. Sadly I only got the $150 deal of $5 per $500 not $300 like I’m just learning about.
It took me 2-3 weeks for pending points to become available.
I am going to try a push from Ally (which will depart Ally on Monday, and supposedly arrive Wednesday) to see if it triggers it. I don’t have many other banks to try at the moment.