To Comply With Government Regulations Paypal Is Required to Review Certain Transactions

Why You lot Can Venmo for "Cocaine" or "Bomb" but Non a "Cubano Sandwich"

And don't even think well-nigh saying "Islamic republic of iran" on PayPal.

PayPal is particularly sensitive to payments that could violate foreign sanctions. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Reminder: If you want to PayPal or Venmo some greenbacks to someone without any hitches, practise not put the discussion Iran in the memo field. On Midweek, Jewish Currents got an abrasive reminder of this rather blunt policy. The magazine tweeted that nine payments to its staff and contributors had been held upward by PayPal because the transaction descriptions included the term Islamic republic of iran in reference to a slice that the magazine published.

PayPal, along with its subsidiary Venmo, uses a system that automatically flags keywords in the payment memo field that could indicate a violation of U.S. sanctions. Upon detecting a suspicious transaction, PayPal sends an e-mail to both the sender and receiver reading, "To comply with government regulations, PayPal is required to review certain transactions. The payment yous sent is currently existence reviewed and we will complete this procedure within 72 hours." Then if, say, yous try to transport a friend money for "drinks at Cuba Libre," you'll speedily acquire how dense PayPal'due south system tin be when information technology comes to context clues.

This longstanding PayPal policy has caused numerous headaches in the by. Users accept run into trouble sending payments reading "Persian Nowruz"—a New year's holiday—because of the term Persian and making donations to Syrian refugees because of the term Syrian.

When asked about Jewish Currents' puzzler, PayPal told Slate in a statement, "PayPal takes its regulatory and compliance obligations seriously, including U.Due south. economic and trade sanctions administered past the U.S. Section of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Our goal is to deliver as seamless of a payments experience as possible while we do our job in making sure payments made on our platforms comply with applicable police. We realize any delay in making or receiving a payment can be frustrating, and we appreciate our customers' patience as we comply with our regulatory obligations." Jacob Plitman, the publisher of Jewish Currents, told Slate that the payment specifically referring to Islamic republic of iran eventually went through, but that the eight others that came later on are notwithstanding under review. PayPal said those remaining delays are "related to standard bank transfer times for eCheck payments."

PayPal mainly relies on lists of embargoed countries, organizations, and individuals that the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control has compiled to determine what payments require further review. Yet this leaves out a proficient number of illicit activities that the payment service could exist facilitating—leaving the impression of a rather arbitrary flagging system. To go a amend sense of what PayPal does and doesn't deem suspicious, I sent my editor dozens of 1 cent transactions with different memo descriptions, which are listed beneath. It's worth noting that this list is nowhere near complete, and PayPal has a number of other mechanisms to check for illegal behavior, such as fraud-prevention engineering that uses machine learning.

Equally yous can see, PayPal's flagging has a fairly eager trigger finger when information technology comes to annihilation having to exercise with foreign sanctions and a laissez-faire opinion toward weapons, drugs, human and animal trafficking, prostitution, and hate groups. It also seems that proper nouns referring to specific entities are under more scrutiny than general descriptions of criminal activeness, which are perhaps more than likely to exist a joke. In fairness, it'south unlikely that someone really in the market place to accident something up would write bomb in the payment clarification, but and then once more a person trying to send funds to the Islamic State isn't probable to attach the flagged term ISIS to their donation either.

Words and phrases that were flagged

Iran

ISIS

Farsi

Due north Korea

Kim Jong-un

Bashar al-Assad

Qasem Soleimani

Real Irish gaelic Republican Army

Cuba

Cubano sandwich

Syria

Syrian refugee

Al-Qaeda

Sinaloa Cartel

Los Zetas

Shining Path

Words and phrases that were not flagged

Bomb

Car bomb

Weapons of mass destruction

Assassination

Hitman

Kidnapping

Terrorist

Cartel

Anthrax

Ricin

Sarin gas

AK-47

Glock 43

Dog fight

Nazis

Stormfront

Atomwaffen

Unite the Right

Proud Boys

KKK

Klansmen

David Knuckles

Prostitutes

Handjob

Blowjob

Revenge porn

Snuff flick

Man trafficking

Slave

Fetus

Stem cells

Kidney harvest

Napalm

Coyote

Marijuana

MDMA

Ecstasy

LSD

Meth

Black tar heroin

Ketamine

Cocaine

Fake ID

Wire fraud

Little Women bootleg DVD

Fake Yeezys

Rhino horn

Elephant tusk

Pangolin

Shark fin

Irish Republican Regular army

MS-thirteen

Republic of iraq

Sudan

Republic of yemen

Hezbollah

Venezuela

Somalia

Time to come Tense  is a partnership of Slate , New America , and Arizona State Academy  that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Source: https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/paypal-venmo-iran-syria-sanctions-crime-detection-system.html

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