How To Use PayPal Friends And Family Features

PayPal encourages sellers and customers to make payments through them by offering different offers. But recently, some customers are complaining about the Friends and Family option on PayPal. If you are looking for some money saving tips, then you would like to avoid this feature, we guess.

Any third-party payment app like PayPal obviously comes with buyer protection services. But here something went wrong. We have encountered many money saver customers who got scams from some online traders through PayPal, just for choosing the Friends and Family option.

Before you choose the Friends and Family option, next time, we would like to explain its mechanism. Besides this, you would also learn when and how to use it and when not to. PayPal has also launched a warning about this option. It helps to avoid making payments while you don’t know the seller.

What is this PayPal Friends and Family Option?

Generally, PayPal shows you up some friendly warning messages whenever you tend to use the Friends and Family option. Well, you can send or receive an amount of money from your known people like family and friends. You are liable to do this job either from the Friends and Family or Goods and Services payment option.

This Family and Friends option is a good choice when you wish to pay back the money to one of your family members, friends. Also, this is useful when you consider sending a gift card or money over the seas to anyone of your family.

How to Use PayPal Friends and Family Feature?

First of all, make sure that both the sender and the recipient should have a PayPal account of their own. You can use the PayPal application as well as the official website of PayPal, as per your requirements. Just be sure that your country supports the option of Friends and Family payment. The process of signing up for a PayPal account is free of cost. Next, you can follow the steps cited below in order to use the PayPal Friends and Family feature.

1. Sign in to the PayPal account.
2. Tap on the Send and Request option available there.
3. From the Send Money option, you need to enter the registered phone number, contact name or the email address.
4. After that, you have to type the payment amount at the space of the amount option. You might leave a note for the recipient.

When you are selecting the recipient for sending the money, ensure to choose the right contact. A wrong recipient might cause you a loss rather than those money-saving tips.

What is the Cost behind the Friends and Family Payment Option?

If you are a resident of the U.S, then you need not pay anything for transferring the money from your PayPal account to the other. Outside the U.S, you might encounter a fee equal to almost 5% of the transferred amount. This generally happens when you are transferring the money abroad.

If you use a credit or debit card for the transfer purpose on PayPal, then you can face a small fee for both domestic and international transfer. This fee can vary from region to region.

Is there Anything Frightening about PayPal Friends and Family?

Yes, to some extent. It is better to avoid this payment option when you don’t know the recipient in real life. You must go for this rule: discard those recipients for this payment option whom you don’t consider as friends or family in real life.

That’s what the User Agreement of PayPal says. You can check it out on their application or website regarding the rules and regulations to friends and family for business purchases.

When you are paying an unknown recipient, you can use the Goods and Services payment option. If you want to avoid future harassments, then this is the only option. Choosing the Friends and Family feature might save you up some money but can give you severe headaches. Some users think it completely reliable to pay 3% of the goods’ cost when using the Goods and Services payment option. At least the payment mode is safer.

Security Options Offered from PayPal:

Well, if anything fraud happens through the Friends and Family payment option, does PayPal reimburse those fraudulent requests? If this is what you are thinking, then you might be disappointed after listening to the answer. PayPal community does not listen to all those fraudulent requests that are passed by this Friends and Family feature.

But if you opt for the Goods and Services feature rather than choosing the former one, then the community will definitely help you to get rid of the scam. Make sure to select the Goods and Services payment option when you decide to pay someone who you don’t know.

If you go through the PayPal Purchase Protection policy, then you would find these following terms covered by the community. 

• The sellers don’t get to know your full financial circumstances
• Transactions are encrypted and monitored all around the clock
• The policy covers all global transaction processes

Safety Measures for Buyers:

There are certain regulations and policies for buyers. If you maintain those regulations, you can never get a scam on the PayPal app. Go through those to avoid any kind of scam.

1. PayPal will check out those fraudulent payments for you for those you had to pay but never received.
2. If the order never arrives at your doorstep, then your request will be granted.
3. You can get the payment back if the order still arrived but it is somehow different than what showed to you online.

If you encounter any of these three circumstances, then you can request for justice to the PayPal community. The community will definitely reimburse the cost of the product along with the shipping charge if involved. 

If the PayPal community gets to know such an issue from any of the buyers, it initially asks for the cooperation from the seller. If the seller doesn’t open up the path for a refund to you, then you can report this incident to the Resolution Center. Make sure that you report the whole incident to the PayPal community within sixty days of purchase or transaction date. 

Safety Measures for Sellers

The seller might have to refund if the buyer complains about the inappropriate transaction or not receiving the product that he or she ordered from the seller. PayPal only covers these two conditions while considering the refund policy for the buyers.

The seller can defend itself if it has valid proof of the transaction or product invoice. If the seller is able to produce any valid proof against the delivery or shipment of the product, then it can escape the refund processing.

If you are browsing for money-saving tips, then we suggest you to skip adding every recipient as Friends and Family on PayPal. Just add true family members and friends of yours while sending money to them. Otherwise, you might get in trouble if any online scammer tries to trap you through online payment on PayPal. 

However, if you are considering any business-related transactions, then there are many other options available rather than PayPal. These business transaction apps are way safer than PayPal. Thus you are able to avoid the extra charges and additionally, those scams.