PayPal says New Zealand money transfer problem fixed by Friday

PayPal says New Zealand money transfer problem fixed by Friday

PayPal has apologised to New Zealand customers who have not received payments for the past nine days and says problems should be fixed by Friday.

The company's Sydney-based director of merchant services Simon Banks said the company "screwed it up" and was talking to all major customers who have not received expected payments because of a fault in the interface between the PayPal system and NZ banks.

"We uploaded a file which effectively fixes the issue and sends the payments to the NZ banks today, which means the money should show up tomorrow [Thursday]," he said.

"There is a chance, depending on the bank you are with, that it could show up the next day, but it will be by the end of the week."

He said the fault occurred in the process of "something we were releasing technically that created an issue in how our ability to withdraw in New Zealand worked, and it was a bigger issue than we thought".

"We thought it might have been a sporadic thing," he said.

"It was not till Monday US time that we realised that it was a really widespread issue that was related to the same problem.

"We are really sorry, We are supposed to be an enabling business, that's why people use PayPal. Kiwis sell all over the world on our platform."

Although Banks refused to say how many transactions were affected, technology commentator Paul Brislen said the number would have been in the thousands.