Pending? What the hell, payal? (2 Viewers)

[upNdown]

I bought a chip online yesterday from Rubescasinochips. I've bought from him before. This is a friggen $8 transaction, and it's still flagged as "pending" with the following explanation:
Regulations require us to take a closer look at some transactions. Your payment is temporarily pending while we review it.
What?
What the hell?

 

[links_slayer]

You've been made.

 

[BGinGA]

I had a similar incident occur about a month ago, only they flagged a payment ~to~ my account. No reason was given, and after 3 days, they cleared it -- again, with absolutely no explanation. There were no dubious code words or text involved whatsoever. I typically have dozens of PP transactions per week (both ways), and this was a first. Neither one of us could figure out why it was flagged for review.

 

[Jeff]

Anti Money Laundering (AML) oversight of financial institutions produces some really weird policies. Paypal is just another financial institution. Probably even more risky than banks or brokerage firms, because Paypal has very little proven knowledge of their clients. There are VERY heavy punishments for Financial institutions like banks or brokerage houses unwillingly facilitating money laundering. Money laundering used to be all about avoiding taxes, now its about funding terrorism. These policies now become very important and are followed to the letter even in situations where they could be short-cutted. Also, they're not going to explain what they're looking for to avoid people gaming their policies to launder money.

 

[Kain8]

Could just be random audits and the amount of the transaction doesn't even come into it.

 

[upNdown]

Anti Money Laundering (AML) oversight of financial institutions produces some really weird policies. Paypal is just another financial institution. Probably even more risky than banks or brokerage firms, because Paypal has very little proven knowledge of their clients. There are VERY heavy punishments for Financial institutions like banks or brokerage houses unwillingly facilitating money laundering. Money laundering used to be all about avoiding taxes, now its about funding terrorism. These policies now become very important and are followed to the letter even in situations where they could be short-cutted. Also, they're not going to explain what they're looking for to avoid people gaming their policies to launder money.

All very sensible. But eight bucks??

 

[Poker Zombie]

My washing machine has a button for "small load". Maybe they thing $8 is small load money laundering. :

 

[Hobbyphilic]

All very sensible. But eight bucks??

Yeah, even $8. The point of random holds and checks are to prevent money laundering. They found when they publicly set the limit to $10,000 (used to be form 8300 not sure if that changed) they were getting a lot of transactions for $9,000. So now there is a lot of smart AML protocols in place. The old idea if you want to launder money you need to send $1 a million different ways is much less effective now than it was 10 years ago.

 

[Jeff]

All very sensible. But eight bucks??

Yep. No exceptions. Every single time. Not following the policy is as bad as having no policy at all.

 

[detroitdad]

Wrong email address

 

[Wils]

They found when they publicly set the limit to $10,000 (used to be form 8300 not sure if that changed) they were getting a lot of transactions for $9,000.

Reminds me of a "criminal stupidity" story I heard a while back. A woman was involved in a bank robbery and went into another bank somewhere else with a large sum of money and asked, "what's the maximum amount of cash I can deposit without it alerting the authorities?"

 

[Quicksilver-75]

Anti Money Laundering (AML) oversight of financial institutions produces some really weird policies. Paypal is just another financial institution. Probably even more risky than banks or brokerage firms, because Paypal has very little proven knowledge of their clients. There are VERY heavy punishments for Financial institutions like banks or brokerage houses unwillingly facilitating money laundering. Money laundering used to be all about avoiding taxes, now its about funding terrorism. These policies now become very important and are followed to the letter even in situations where they could be short-cutted. Also, they're not going to explain what they're looking for to avoid people gaming their policies to launder money.

That's pretty stringent! Laundering money $8 at a time?

 

[DJ Mack]

Reminds me of a "criminal stupidity" story I heard a while back. A woman was involved in a bank robbery and went into another bank somewhere else with a large sum of money and asked, "what's the maximum amount of cash I can deposit without it alerting the authorities?"

In the US cash transactions totaling $10,000 or more must be reported on a currency transaction report (CTR) as @Hobbyphilic noted. Ironically (or not) inquiring about the reporting requirements means that a report has to be filed even if the subsequent transaction totals $38.53 because it's presumed that the customer is structuring.

These days there's no paper forms involved, it's all done automatically through the same systems that the teller uses to access your account.

Back to the OP - every transaction has two parties. It's entirely possible that @upNdown is squeaky clean but the other party has done something unrelated to this transaction to make all of their transactions subject to review.

 

[ktran]

I bought a chip online yesterday from Rubescasinochips. I've bought from him before. This is a friggen $8 transaction, and it's still flagged as "pending" with the following explanation:
Regulations require us to take a closer look at some transactions. Your payment is temporarily pending while we review it.
What?
What the hell?

Is this Rubescasinochip website safe?

 

[ReallyGoodUsername]

Is this Rubescasinochip website safe?

No. It’s incredibly dangerous… to your wallet.

Avoid at all costs!

 

[upNdown]

Is this Rubescasinochip website safe?

Yeah I've bought chips from that guy on eBay for years

 

[Eriks]

Holy bumpareno, I was about to reply to the OP

 

[FordPickup92]

I get payment pending to Rubes PayPal/website reguarly
I just assumed it was something involved with his set up but could be purely PayPal related
No real reason why and it always clears within a day or 2

 

[Paul Schaffer]

So it is a 100% paypal thing. They don't like me. Its so odd when it happens. I have first time buyers no issues and then dedicated customers will get hit with hit.
Please do know that as soon as the payment does come in I will process the order as if the payment cleared. Never had one rejected.

When I talked to paypal a few years back they said it had to do with a check to make sure I was not a bad guy.

Appreciate the feedback. I really need to do a hard reboot on the store front and hopefully that will help.