Only just noticed this..

"I finally closed my account with PayPal last year and have never used it since. "

Really? You have given me a McEnroe moment! ;-)

Doesn't PayPal have a "Guest Checkout" mode where you pay with a credit card without actually having a PayPal account?

Looking into it, I see that they do. Thanks.

PayPal is continuing to drive me nuts. All of a sudden, almost every payment I try to make using my bank account as a funding source is flagged as potentially fraudulent and they want me to instead fund with a credit card. Of course, this involves a fee.

Oddly, if I change the payment type from personal to commercial (to the same individual), it gladly accepts the bank as a funding source. Of course, this involves a fee charged to the recipient.

Seems to be a major "bait and switch" strategy on PayPal's part.

Today, PayPal rejected my Instapaper subscription renewal (funded by my bank account for a long time now) and wanted me to switch to funding with a credit card. More revenue generating bait and switch.

This is not my experience. Perhaps something else is going on?

I called them and spoke to them for a long time. They explained that they have complex fraud algorithms and once a transaction is flagged as potentially fraudulent there is nothing that PayPal staff can do about it. You can either cancel the transaction or select a different funding source. (Of course, that always means selecting a credit card which generates fees for them.)

What they couldn't explain was why sending money to my daughter as a "Personal" transaction is always flagged as fraudulent, while sending money to her as a "Purchase" is never flagged as fraudulent. Same PayPal account, same recipient email address, same recipient, same amount. The only difference is that a Personal transaction does not earn PayPal any fee while a Purchase generates income for them.

They refuse to discuss it any further or make an attempt to discover why this is happening. Apparently their fraud detection algorithms are in a big black box into which no one is allowed to peer.

What else could possibly be going on? If there is something wrong with my account, shouldn't they be anxious to figure out what it is? When I reminded them that they were losing money by not working with me on the problem they simply acknowledge that and refused further discussion.

And, yes, my bank account funding source has been "verified" for many years now. I've not had real fraudulent activity on my account and I've never failed to fully fund any transactions. And, yes, I do have a reliable and verified credit card fallback.