Is it possible to transfer PayPal to new owner of a site?

Business
1

I’m close to buying a site off of sitepoint, and I’m being told that it’s no problem for the seller to transfer the existing subscribers - who are paying through paypal - to me so that I can collect those payments immediately. I’ve read conflicting thoughts on this. Can anyone clear this up??

2

I dont think so, but paypal is kinda shady, so who knows.

I think you should send them an email and explain and have them resubscribe?

3

I’m not 100% sure but I’ve read that if the seller has a business account they can transfer the full account to you. Don’t know about transferring only the subscribers though. Sending them an email and asking them to resubscribe isn’t ideal - I know I probably wouldn’t bother resubcribing unless it was an absolutely amazing membership.

4

I think this would be a business account transfer, and not a case of transferring individual accounts, so this might work if what Websitemania says is true.

Thanks again…

5

A business account would belong to the business and so when the business changes ownership so would the business account. The only thing you would need to do is to change the password on the account and make sure that none of the associated email addresses belong to the old owner of the business. You wouldn’t need to even contact Paypal to do that since there are options to make those changes available in the account itself (unlike with a business bank account where you’d need to advise change of signatories by filling out forms).

If it is an individual account then the ownership of that individual hasn’t changed as they still own themselves and so they still own the account and can’t transfer it. Also if that were the case then all of the subscribers have signed up to pay that individual and so the subscriptions would need to be dealt with individually to transfer them to the new owner. The only way you might be able to transfer the account in this situation would be if they were to upgrade the account to a business account first and then it could stay with the business.

6

thanks for the information on transferring a PayPal account. I 'm guessing I can check with PayPal to confirm it is a business account?

Thanks again.

7

What felgall wrote sounds perfectly logical. Sadly, the reality is that Paypal is not always behaving logically. I do know that when you setup an account with Paypal, even a business account, it requires some personal information from the business owner. I would recommend that you contact Paypal directly and find out whether the ownership of the Paypal account can be transferred along with the ownership of a business. It should be able to, but this is Paypal we’re talking about here and the last thing you want is to wake up one day a few weeks after your sale and find out that Paypal smoked your account.

8

If this is a small transaction, why not just “transfer” the emails.

  1. let the other party make a Paypal account.
  2. change the main email in your Paypal account.
  3. let the other party add the email to their account.
9

I really appreciate all of your thoughts on this. Like you said, I just need to call PayPal to get it straight from the horses mouth.

10