PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

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Greyhound
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PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#1 Unread post by Greyhound »

A couple days ago I attempted to order a NGC graded 1956 1 Pahlavi gold coin that dates from the reign of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. I had previously purchased a 2.5 Pahlavi coin and thought it would be nice to have another denomination. I placed my order with a New Jersey rare coin dealer and paid with PayPal. I immediately got an email from PayPal stating the following:

“To comply with government regulations, PayPal is required to review certain transactions. The payment you sent is currently being reviewed and we will complete this process within 72 hours. This review only involves this transaction and does not affect the use of your PayPal account.”

After researching the reason for this, it turns out that any PayPal purchase you make that contains a word like Iran, Persia, Persian, etc. will result in a hold on your payment until PayPal decides you're really not funding Iranian terrorists. Doesn't matter that the purchase is entirely within the US and does not transfer a single penny to the country of Iran, you still get flagged. You could be adopting a Persian cat from an animal shelter and the same thing will happen. Extremely heavy-handed and annoying! I haven't heard back yet from PayPal, but I'm not sure they will release the funds after 72 hours, because some people who have had this happen said they first had to respond to PayPal and explain exactly what they were ordering and why their order contains one of the "forbidden" words. I did a chat with a PayPal support person, but they had no authority to speed up the transaction and release my payment. There are a number of other trigger words relating to primarily Islamic nations, cities, people's names, etc. that will also get a payment put on hold. Something to be aware of if you wish to order coins from the middle east or Asia.

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Re: PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#2 Unread post by Daniel »

Interesting. I didn't know.

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Re: PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#3 Unread post by Paul »

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Re: PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#4 Unread post by Greyhound »

Update: It took two days, but PayPal finally released the hold on my payment to the coin dealer without asking me any questions about the transaction.

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Re: PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#5 Unread post by Londor »

Huh, that is really ... interesting actually. I never thought about that actually, and you know, it is both great and bad at the same time actually. It means that the authorities really care about their fight against terrorism, however they actually have to control every single person that is trying to make certain transaction from or to those countries, which is kind of complicated sometimes. That is exactly why we need a more complex adult payment gateway that would be accessible from any point on the planet.
Last edited by Londor on Fri May 14, 2021 10:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#6 Unread post by Iceresistance »

Yeah, any payments to Middle East coins are going to be paused until they are SURE that the buyers intent is NOT related to what's going on there today . . .
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Re: PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#7 Unread post by Urangenii »

It took two days, but PayPal finally released the hold on my payment to the coin dealer without asking me any questions about the transaction. Yeah, any payments to Middle East coins are going to be paused until they are SURE that the buyer's intent is NOT related to what's going on there today. For safety, I start to use KYC/KYB/ AML procedures. This company automates know your customer and anti-money laundering procedure by the implementation of actual PEPs lists and complex risk logic. It secures businesses from almost all types of money laundering.

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Re: PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#8 Unread post by KayBur »

Urangenii wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 11:45 am It took two days, but PayPal finally released the hold on my payment to the coin dealer without asking me any questions about the transaction. Yeah, any payments to Middle East coins are going to be paused until they are SURE that the buyer's intent is NOT related to what's going on there today. For safety, I start to use KYC/KYB/ AML procedures. This company automates know your customer and anti-money laundering procedure by the implementation of actual PEPs lists and complex risk logic. It secures businesses from almost all types of money laundering.
Normal safety procedure. Given the turbulent environment, it is best to be vigilant once again and check incoming payments.

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Re: PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#9 Unread post by Worldwide C »

My dad had that happen once because he was paying for some bulk world coins and the description stated you can ask for coins from certain countries, so I think I either put Iran or Cuba (among other countries) in the description, so after that PayPal froze my dads account for 2-3 days and in the end we had to remove those words to be able to complete the transaction.

As far as I know only Iran, Cuba and North Korea are banned keywords. But I’ve seen listings of coins from those countries under different names or within lots.
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Re: PayPal holding payment for Iranian coin

#10 Unread post by Earle42 »

It took two days, but PayPal finally released the hold on my payment to the coin dealer without asking me any questions about the transaction. Yeah, any payments to Middle East coins are going to be paused until they are SURE that the buyer's intent is NOT related to what's going on there today.
Thanks for this info.

What a weird day we live in!

The ridiculous manner of withdrawal from Afghanistan of US troops gifted the terrorists a larger air force than Canada and Mexico combined...we need paypal like security for the "high ups."
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