If you use PayPal to accept credit cards for your small business (eBay, Etsy, e-store, freelance, etc), you may not want to keep your money sitting at PayPal (especially if you are earning higher interest in your bank account). There is a feature called Auto Sweep that checks daily and automatically “sweeps” any money that arrives in your PayPal account into your bank account overnight.
The Auto Sweep feature used to be easily found in their settings. Then they moved it into a dim corner of their website that was harder to find. Last week, I couldn’t find it at all. After digging through several outdated articles, it turns out that as of 2018 you can’t access the feature at all unless you call in and ask for it explicitly. Not exactly customer-friendly behavior, but PayPal makes money off your idle balances… (The PayPal Money Market fund that offered higher interest shut down in July 2011.)
Here’s how to enable Auto Sweep on your PayPal account as of 2018. This is another post for the benefit for others searching online. First, make sure you meet these requirements:
- You must have a Business PayPal account in good standing.
- You must have a bank account linked to your PayPal account.
- You must have lifted your withdrawal limit and verified your PayPal Account.
Next, you must call PayPal directly via phone.
- Once logged into your PayPal account click Contact at the bottom of the page.
- Choose the Call Us option and call the number listed for your account. Use the unique code to quickly identify yourself to them.
- When you reach a human, explicitly ask for “Auto Sweep” to be enabled on your account.
After that, they will flip a switch on their end, and you should finally be able to see the option enabled on your online account. Log back into your PayPal account and follow these instructions:
- Click Profile beside “Log Out” and select Profile and settings.
- Click My money.
- Click Set near “Automatic transfers.”
- Click Edit.
- Click Yes, select the bank you want your money transferred to, and click Save.
Here’s what you should see after Auto Sweep has successfully been turned on:
There you go. Note that if you ever manually request a cash transfer from a bank account to your PayPal balance, that this would automatically turn off Auto Sweep. I guess the money running around in circles causes a tear in the time-space continuum or something. (You can go back an turn Auto Sweep back on manually.)
If you activate this feature, it may also change your how you use the PayPal Business Debit card, as there will no longer be any cash balance in your account to draw from. For non-PIN signature purchases, these will still work if you first link a bank account as a backup source, and then the debit card charges will pull from your designated backup source. You can also link up certain PayPal credit cards (), but not just any credit card as backup. For ATM withdrawals, you will not be able to make ATM withdrawals with a zero PayPal balance ().
I wouldn’t really recommend using the debit card anyway, there are much .
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