Travels with Paypal: In Search of a Credit Card

In which I attempt to conduct a simple online payment.

The “Buy Now” link looked innocuous enough, but I was unprepared for the string of problems that ensued. First, the login failed with an inscrutable error message. Then, the available list of funding sources contains only one credit card, which I don’t want to use.

When I try to add the card I do want to use, I’m told it’s already part of my account. When I check the list of credit cards in my account (for which I must open a new browser window and manually navigate to paypal.com, since the payment page has no link to my account), I see a possible cause of my problem: this card has no stored credit verification number. This makes me a bit suspicious already, since the purported purpose of this number is as a secondary security measure to be entered at the time of payment and not stored by online servers. But this is PayPal, so maybe they have a special agreement with Visa.

I try to enter the credit card verification number (don’t forget you have to click on “Update credit card expiration” to do so, or to add a new credit card) and am told “Card number, expiration date, and address remained the same; therefore no change to the card has been made.” Apparently credit card verification numbers are too piddly to warrant a hit to the PayPal database.

Upon rereading the information in list of credit cards, I notice the button “Complete Expanded Use Enrollment”. Do I need expanded use? All I want to do is pay for something with the credit card; that seems like standard use to me. But I’m running out of options, so I click the button.

Ah, lovely, it seems that using your credit for anything at all is, indeed, expanded use (though they fail to mention anything about this on the page to edit the credit card), and requires waiting for your next monthly card statement and entering a unique number that will appear therein. This could be a problem, seeing as how I’m in Italy and my statement are sent to my parent’s house in Chicago.

Good thing that the people I need to pay will accept checks. Clearly I’m not ready for the convience of online payment.