posted 6 years ago
> cash ... from PayPal
When I signed on they wanted to link to a bank account. Funds can be moved from PayPal to that account and withdrawn in cash like any other bank account. In practice, for the last 10 years or so I've maintained a zero balance in PayPal because they automatically and immediately access the bank account to complete any outgoing transactions.
A slight digression, a heads up, hopefully not too far off track, regarding financial privacy:
One thing everyone who cares about their financial privacy should know about are the laws and regulations governing required reports by the financial institutions of any kind to the U.S. government. The Patriot Act expanded and made serious all sorts of automatic reporting as well as requiring businesses to try to probe for personal details at least once a year. There are triggers (size of transaction, repeated transactions, destination of transaction, many more) which cause the bank or other biz to be required to report it to the government. Not wait for a "request" but proactively send in the information w/in a certain time frame. Also, businesses are required to have a documented procedure in place to try to verify the identity, location, contact info of all their customers. IIRC the Feds required two out of a list of 6(?) possible documents for a credible ID.
FICA (I believe), one of the bodies regulating stock brokers now requires the broker to make "every attempt" to determine the suitability of an investment for it's customer. What this means in practice is that the broker will _insist_ on knowing all your income, financial holdings, accounts, CC's, debts, real assets, liabilities (like child support) - everything. The biz always points to the Patriot Act as requiring this. In fact, no law or regulation requires them to obtain this info. The Feds _do_ require the broker to attempt to get this information and to attempt to update it fully at least once a year. They leave the details to the individual brokers and businesses and most happily bully and strong arm all customers into giving over their whole personal financial life. Wonderful marketing resource...
Accurate or specific law and regulatory info is not found on the business websites - at all. It is documented, fairly well, in the FICA, SEC, and other federal sites and many legal site have extensive explanation and commentary. It's a long read that I haven't had to look at for a while and so I beg off on the details. For people serious about their privacy, the info is out there, at present, and not that hard to find.
Rufus