PayPal Resolves 2-Hour Global Outage Affecting Multiple Products

PayPal experienced a global outage that affected multiple products for about two hours Thursday (Nov. 21).

The incident lasted from 10:53 UTC to 12:59 UTC Thursday, the company said on its status page.

The outage affected account withdrawals, express checkout, cryptocurrency, the receive money function of Xoom and several functions of Venmo, according to the status page.

PayPal posted its initial notification of the incident at 12:15 UTC Thursday and said it was resolved at 12:59 UTC Thursday.

“We are experiencing a system issue that may be affecting multiple products in our production environment,” the company said in its initial notification.

Downdetector showed a surge in PayPal problem reports Thursday, peaking at 8,735 reports.

During the incident, some people took to social media to find out if PayPal was down for other users of the service as well.

“Is @PayPal down for anyone else?” a user said in a post on social platform X. “I cannot log in to either of my accounts, cannot change the password on the one related to my YouTube channel.”

Is @PayPal down for anyone else?

I cannot login to either of my accounts, cannot change the password on the one related to my youtube channel.

— Damien aka Techno (@Damienc1985) November 21, 2024

“Hi, is PayPal down?” said another. “It’s saying my password isn’t right, but I get sent round in a circle if I click Forgotten Password link.”

@AskPayPal hi is PayPal down? It’s saying my password isn’t right but I get sent round in a circle if I click Forgotten Password link

— ????????? (@_jocatkins) November 21, 2024

“Thought my PayPal got hacked or something, but turns out it’s down for everyone,” said another.

thought my PayPal got hacked or something but turns out it’s down for everyone pic.twitter.com/apNRFVhLUs

— Jhonny ⚹٭ (@JhonnyWhite69) November 21, 2024

“Thank God it’s just PayPal having problems and being down,” another user said in a post on X. “I thought I got hacked for a second. Went on X to make sure everyone else was having the same problem. Hopefully @PayPal gets this fixed soon. I got logged out and was scared someone about to steal all my $$$.”

Thank God It’s just PayPal having problems and being down?

I thought I got hacked for a second ?

Went on X to make sure everyone else was having the same problem hopefully @PayPal gets this fixed soon I got logged out and was scared someone about to steal all my $$$ ?

— ?Cherry Picks? (@Ch3rry_Picks) November 21, 2024

PayPal said in October that it saw a 9% year-over-year increase in total transaction volume in the third quarter, reaching $422.6 billion, largely due to growth in Venmo and PayPal digital payments.

Venmo alone saw a 15% transaction volume increase while the “PayPal Everywhere” initiative and expanded debit card offerings boosted customer engagement and transaction frequency, the company reported Oct. 29 during its quarterly earnings call.

The company said it added 1 million debit cards since the early September launch of PayPal Everywhere.