The only two things you need to take money out of an account are the routing number and account number.
There are a lot of checks on top of that which individual banks may or may not implement or care about, but at the end of the day those two numbers get you 99% of the way there. And for an organization the size of PayPal they're really going to be given the benefit of the doubt by banks.
In Australia they technically need a direct debit authority, but PayPal is above the law in Australia so our dispute process is through our local bank. It works, but it's very tedious and the bank will try to push you towards the PayPal dispute process. It's much better not to link it to a bank account at all, use a credit card because that way it's two US corps fighting with each other when there's a problem.
must be some US thing, because this is literally crazy to think about to allow withdrawal without authorization
might also be a reason why US banks always seem nosy as fuck, calling people about transactions, blocking stuff, etc. instead of just giving the account owner a safe way to perform transfers/authorizations/set limits
pc86|3 years ago
There are a lot of checks on top of that which individual banks may or may not implement or care about, but at the end of the day those two numbers get you 99% of the way there. And for an organization the size of PayPal they're really going to be given the benefit of the doubt by banks.
Psychlist|3 years ago
chongli|3 years ago
megous|3 years ago
might also be a reason why US banks always seem nosy as fuck, calling people about transactions, blocking stuff, etc. instead of just giving the account owner a safe way to perform transfers/authorizations/set limits