Hi everyone

PayPal users for personal affairs. Good? Bad? Advantages? Disadvantages?

Thanks in advance

Paypal is the 800-pound gorilla for P2P payments.

The good: It's easy and fast but you may need to send them a copy of your ID to verify your account.

The bad and the ugly: If they suspect your account is being used for anything naughty they'll close it and hold on to the funds for 6 months. Note that word "suspect". Their terms of usage are riddled with waffles words.Worse, if your account is shut down there's no way to dispute it. None, nada, zilch.

So try it but don't become absolutely reliant on it.

I've had a mostly inactive PayPal account for 5 years, maintaining a small balance. Lately, I've been doing more shopping online and find that many online retailers will not accept debit cards directly, specifying PayPal or a direct payment method like Western Union. Some do accept credit cards but I do not have one.

When I attempted to deposit more money into my PayPal account; I was notified that I had to verify my identity and address of record by FAX, online scans not acceptable.

Using their online cover page, I went to a local copy shop in Bangkok and faxed them a copy of my US drivers license. Five days later, I was notified that my account was now active and usable.