PayPal is one of the most well-known and widely used online payment services worldwide. However, if you’re con­sid­er­ing switching to one of the PayPal al­tern­at­ives, you can delete your PayPal account in just a few simple steps and this can be done directly on the website.

How do I delete my PayPal account?

Re­gard­less of your reason for deleting your PayPal account, there are a few factors that may prevent you from deleting it im­me­di­ately. For example, it is not possible to close the account if there are still open payments. The same applies to open disputes, buyer pro­tec­tion claims, or chargebacks, which also prevent your PayPal account from being deleted. If you have these standing trans­ac­tions on your account, they first need to be resolved. Only then can you follow these step-by-step in­struc­tions that show you how to delete your PayPal account.

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Step 1: Visit the website and log in

To delete your PayPal account, you must first log in to it. First of all, go to the PayPal website and log in.

Image: PayPal: Login
Before you can delete your PayPal account, you must first log in.

Step 2: Open your account settings

After logging in, you’ll auto­mat­ic­ally be taken to the overview page of your account, which sum­mar­ises your last activ­it­ies. However, you won’t find a quick function for deleting your PayPal account on this page. To do this, you must access the settings menu by clicking on the cog icon in the upper menu bar.

Image: PayPal: Settings
Access your PayPal settings by clicking on the cog icon.

Step 3: Delete your PayPal account

You now have direct access to your account settings, where you can change the language version of the profile, or view your merchant number among other things. However, you’ll find the button you need at the very end. Click on ‘close your account’ to start the process of deleting your PayPal account.

Image: PayPal: Account options
By clicking the ‘close your account’ button, you initiate the process of closing your PayPal account.

A pop-up window will open, and a message from PayPal will be displayed, saying that the closure of your account is final. This means that you can’t re­act­iv­ate the same account or view trans­ac­tions made at a later point at all. To confirm you’ve re­gistered this in­form­a­tion, and your decision, click ‘Close Account’ again to per­man­ently delete your PayPal account.

Note

After you have deleted your PayPal account, you’ll auto­mat­ic­ally receive an email to the address as­so­ci­ated with your profile con­firm­ing that your account has been suc­cess­fully closed. If you have received this mail without having deleted your account, you should click on the link in the message, which takes you directly to customer service.

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