I'm a UK resident, and enjoy the relative freedom of being able to deposit and lose money on a vast range of gambling sites pretty easily. Many sites such as Betfair and Pokerstars are happy to accept PayPal, and are apparently approved to do so despite PayPal's Acceptable Use policy:

"PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for activities that involve gambling or gaming activities. This includes but is not limited to casino games, sports betting, horse or greyhound racing, lottery tickets, certain games of skill, and other ventures that facilitate gambling at PayPal's discretion."

I've used PayPal as a deposit / withdrawal option for a good few years on a number of sites. Today my PayPal account was permanently closed, with the above cited Acceptable Use Policy offered as part of the explanation.

There's more to it than that though. Here's another excerpt from the email I received from PayPal's security department:

We determined that you received gambling payments from other PayPal users, and in turn, sent those payments to another website for gambling purposes. While this website is approved to accept payments from certain PayPal users, PayPal does not allow intermediate accounts to receive gambling payments and use those funds to facilitate gambling. By engaging in such transactions, you are acting as an unapproved operator of gambling activities per the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy.

I play on a number of sites and I often accept PayPal from other users in exchange for Stars funds and vice versa, which I know is inherently risky as PayPal transactions can be reversed (and such trades are forbidden from 2+2, with good reason) but I only ever trade with people I either know or have good reason to trust, and I've never been scammed in this way. The problem appears to be that I've been essentially acting as an intermediary (on a laughably small scale, but still) by doing this, so I figured I'd post a warning to others here.

I won't be appealing the decision, as it appears to be a fair cop. Just a friendly PSA.

Cliffs: Don't use PayPal for inter-site transfers, even if PayPal is an accepted deposit method on the site(s) in question.

Interesting info. Thanks for posting.

Did you get any Paypal balances returned or were they confiscated?

In case you were not aware. Paypal closing your account is not a life time ban like having a poker site account closed. They do not have a problem with you opening a new account or multiple accounts. Just don't make the same mistakes with the new account. Sounds dumb but it is what it is.

As it happens, I didn't have a balance at the time of the closure so I've avoided any potential headaches there. According to the email I received, PayPal will release any balance after 180 days(!), though as I say I'm not affected by this so I can't comment as to whether that's the actual timetable.

When transferring/receiving money on paypal on the optional notes was there anything related gambling on it. That usually sets off alarm bells at paypal ends if it does.

The 180 day hold on any balance is to cover any possible charge backs. Since they are closing the account they know they will have no easy way to recover a charge back amount if they went ahead and let you withdraw.

this just happened to me and someone I know, we both live in the UK, both our accounts were locked/limited, im still waiting to hear about mines after sending them all the documentation theyve asked for, my friend has had his account reopened but theyve told him he cannot send money to anyone again or his account will be perma banned, we have both had our accounts for over 6 years and done hundreds of transactions on them so its strange this has happened now

Global Poker sounds intriguing due to the PayPal cashouts, but I utilize PayPal for my personal business... I just can't risk losing my PayPal privileges.

it has nothing to do with cashouts ^^

yeh cashouts are fine, the reason this has happened is because of person to person transfers that they say involves money from gambling, what I dont get is, if u have say 400 in ur paypal that u depsoited from ur bank account, someone then sends u 50 they say is related to gambling, how do they differeniate which money u can send to another person/deposit into a gambling website and which u cant as all the money is now mixed together

just recieved this email now

Dear FUrake,

We have completed our review, and as you have completed all the required steps, we have restored your account.

We would also like to thank you for your patience and cooperation during this process.

Yours sincerely,
Camille
PayPal

I know.

I was just stating that this simply reinforces my paranoia of using PayPal with online [s]gambling[/s] sweepstakes.

My guess is you should email PayPal telling them what site you're using and clarifying that is it a legal/good use...ask them if you're at any risk of losing your paypal account by transfering/depositing to site x. Tell them exactly what site x does. If you do that you, in theory, should be pretty safe (I think?).

That said, I suck at life and shouldn't be giving advice, so not sure if this is good or not. Seems reasonable to me though.