Overview

• Industry and Sparkassen officials confirmed that suspicious PayPal SEPA direct debits triggered widespread blocks, with estimates topping €10 billion and institutions such as Bayerische Landesbank, Hessische Landesbank and DZ Bank named.
• PayPal acknowledged a temporary service interruption, said the cause was identified and resolved, and reported that partner-bank transactions were being updated and payment flows restored.
• Sparkassen reported transactions running again from Tuesday morning and placed the flows under continued observation as banks work through a backlog of manually reviewed items.
• Regulators were notified, with oversight led by Luxembourg authorities given PayPal’s EU base and inquiries reported from the European Central Bank.
• Consumer groups urge users to review PayPal and bank accounts, enable strong 2FA and change passwords, noting SEPA rights to reverse direct debits within eight weeks or up to 13 months if unauthorized; a touted darknet trove of PayPal logins remains an unconfirmed factor.