I tried to set up a monthly donation to iNat from PayPal this morning but I see that iNat does not accept funds directly from PayPal but only through banks I have listed on PayPal. I tried three times. What a bummer because I’m not publishing any ways for anybody to get into my personal bank accounts or directly into any of my credit card accounts. Could iNat not accepting PayPal this morning just be a glitch? I pay several monthly bills (like Netflix) directly from my PayPal balance every month.
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Hi Ken, thanks for wanting to support iNat and sorry you’re running into trouble. I haven’t heard before of anyone having trouble donating with their PayPal balance, but we also don’t see any details of your PayPal transaction type from donations (i.e. PayPal protects your privacy and we can’t tell if it’s paid from a credit card, bank account, or balance, let alone anything about those accounts). If you’d like me to try to investigate further, please send me an email at donations at inaturalist . org. Hope we can find a solution that works for you!
Edited to add: I changed the title to be more specific.
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Thanks! I’ll try again and see what happens. If I can’t get it through I’ll let you know. Your title is fine :)
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@carrieseltzer - Hi Carrie! i have the same problem - just wanted to set up for a small monthly donation from Paypal balance but it’s not working: just stating a credit card as the only choice. I noticed this before when trying to make a one-time donation to CAS, also not accepting Paypal balance. Thanks for your advice!
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@carrieseltzer - sorry, forgot: there were no problems with previously done one-time donations to iNat from Paypal balance.
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I am also a bit confused in donation when there come option of companies (which I think means bank) I don’t know but when I put my bank name nothing comes
I suspect that it may not be possible to use a PayPal balance for a recurring gift because you may not have a PayPal balance at the time the next gift is scheduled, but I’m not sure. It does seem like they should at least allow recurring gifts from a balance with a fallback payment method if there’s no balance (or just skip the gift if there’s no balance). But it’s not a setting that we can control, so I suggest reaching out to PayPal support. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful!
Are you referring to this field?
If so, that’s only if the company you work for offers a gift matching program. The vast majority of donors do not enter anything here. The option to pay by bank, paypal, or card comes later and looks like this if you select Bank Transfer:
However, if you do enter your bank name in the appropriate field:
And nothing turns up (like below), then you’ll have to select a different method.
Thank you all and I hope that helps!
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ooh thanks
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@carrieseltzer - thank you for your help. It’s ok now through Paypal help. One has to set up recurring payments from balance first. Quite right, alternative payment options will be automatically offered in case there is no balance left.
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Glad you were able sort that out with PayPal! Thanks for reporting back on that and for becoming a recurring donor :-)
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