$11,710,000,000 in PayPal Payments Blocked by Banks in Germany Over Fraud Concerns: Report

Banks in Germany reportedly stopped €10 billion ($11.71 billion) in PayPal transactions after the payment giant’s fraud detection briefly failed.

The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that billions of euros worth of direct debits flowed from German banks to PayPal last week.

The debits reportedly gave off the impression that bank customers had made gigantic payments to PayPal, and now the payment firm wanted to pull funds from their accounts.

The newspaper, citing “several insiders,” reports that the transactions were processed from savings and cooperative banks to the parent state banks or to DZ Bank before the alarms triggered at the larger institutions, which halted the transfers. Some were processed initially, but the bulk were stopped, and all of the payment firm’s direct debits reportedly went down for several hours.

The issue reportedly materialized because PayPal’s normal system for detecting fraudulent debits temporarily failed, though the person or entity behind the massive potential fraud remains unknown.

In a statement to Reuters , PayPal apologized for the “inconvenience” and said the issue had been resolved, but the firm did not explain the cause of the problem.

“Safety remains our top priority… We are working closely with our banking partners to resolve any discrepancies on customers’ accounts. All legitimate merchant transactions will be fully remunerated.”

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