topic Re: Additional £1 charged seperately in Seller Central

Additional £1 charged seperately

kake100 — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 03:31:41 GMT

I made two purchases on Sunday evening and, for each one, a separate payment of an additional £1 has been charged to my bank card under the title of PAYPAL EBAYUK. However, when logging into my PayPal account neither of those £1 charges appear. Most strange!

I notice that other people have reported this happening to them in the past. Has anyone else experienced this yesterday (Sunday)? Maybe worth checking your card transactions just in case folks!

Obviously I will report it to my bank. But, it is all very odd!

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

kake100 — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 03:55:47 GMT

I realise the above post should have been in the Buying Discussion thread rather than the Selling one, which is where I have just put it. It was gone 3.30am and I was tired is my excuse! But, there doesn't seem to be a way to delete it from this thread. Sorry about that. Although, I suppose it does make more people aware of the issue; so every cloud and all that!

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

tressygirl — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 06:07:59 GMT

This is an odd ' payment' seen by many and neither PayPal or eBay seem to confirm their point or purpose!

As far as anyone here can understand it's some form of verification that a payment provider is making and those who have seen this £1 charge tell us as soon as the payment has been processed successfully the £1 'charge' is credited back!

@kake100

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

tressygirl — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 06:09:09 GMT

There is only a short window to edit a post, about 10 minutes.

Will post my answer there for you, too.

@kake100

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

ile136yz — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 06:34:39 GMT

Hi,

Were the items purchased of low value that may be a reason for a credit card to add an extra charge?

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

4_bathrooms — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 13:15:29 GMT

This thread might be useful (I replied to the wrong thread initially).

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

kake100 — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 13:16:35 GMT

No, they weren't of low value.

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

kake100 — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 13:18:40 GMT

Many thanks for your reply.

Hopefully that will be the case, I will keep an eye on it.

Another of the great mysteries of ebay and PayPal I guess! - lol

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

4_bathrooms — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 13:22:27 GMT

@4_bathrooms wrote:
This thread might be useful (I replied to the wrong thread initially).

This is the reply I intended to post here:

It seems PayPal make a "small charge" whenever a credit or debit card is edited or added to the account; this is just to obtain a "pre-authorisation" hold to confirm the card can be used for online payments - the sum is never actually collected. In PayPal UK's guidance it is stated that £1.00 will be debited from a card that is being "confirmed" and the sum(s) will be refunded once the (last) 4 digit PayPal reference number is confirmed.

My guess is it is one of these confirmation methods that is being used by PayPal.

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

suzpoodles — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:29:03 GMT

Not so, I’m afraid. This has been happening to me now for over a month, with a card that’s not new with no change of details. My details and card have not changed in several years. And just when I think it’s stopped - that is, a few transactions go through without it - it starts up again. 🤦🏼‍♀️
I was just looking today to see if anyone had a concrete answer yet, but it seems not - not on any threads of the same topic. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

4_bathrooms — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:44:48 GMT

It still sounds like PayPal doing a pre-authorisation check rather than it being anything to do with eBay; the "EBAYUK" part of the payment reference will be to tie it to the payment to eBay.

This used to be common with many debit card payments (not just via PayPal) as a debit card payment doesn't immediately go to the merchant. What actually happens is a "pre-authorisation hold" is placed on the buyer's funds; as far as the buyer is concerned the funds are immediately taken from their account but in reality the funds have been ringfenced by the pre-authorisation hold but remain in the buyer's account. The funds are sent to the merchant once an authorisation has been received at which point it takes 2 to 5 working days for the funds to actually clear into the merchants' account.

The whole point of obtaining a £1 pre-authorisation hold is to check the associated bank account actually has funds available; the actual authorisation is never sent for that payment so the £1 will appear back in the buyer's account once the pre-authorisation hold has fallen off it.

It sounds like you are using PayPal as the payment method but a debit card linked to PayPal as the funding source rather than a PayPal balance - you would almost certainly be better protected if you used the debit card directly at checkout. Where "item not as described" claims are concerned PayPal only affords 30 days from the date of delivery to file a claim. You can usually file a chargeback with your bank up to 120 days following payment but you likely won't have that protection with PayPal (a digital wallet) involved. However, in this case it will only become an issue if eBay don't refund you under the terms of their Money Back Guarantee.

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

suzpoodles — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:58:40 GMT

As you only mention banks and debit cards, I don’t know if it makes any difference that I only have a credit card linked to PayPal. It’s been the same one for around 3 years now. Just started happening out of the blue, as others have reported.

The £1s do drop off “pending” eventually, so I’m not worried. If it’s a permanent thing then so be it. But would just like to know why after all these years.

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

tommystrezures — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:06:21 GMT

This link may be useful:

https://www.paypal.com/uk/cshelp/article/why-is-there-a-small-charge-on-my-card-statement-help174

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

4_bathrooms — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:46:23 GMT

@suzpoodles wrote:
As you only mention banks and debit cards, I don’t know if it makes any difference that I only have a credit card linked to PayPal.

Pre-authorisation holds for small amounts are a security measure where debit card payments are involved for the reasons mentioned but as per the first PayPal link I posted PayPal do mention they do this for credit and debit card transactions.

Incidentally, when you use a credit card to purchase something worth £100 or more you have powerful legal protection known as Section 75. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act means that the card issuer shares equal responsibility and liability with the merchant involved if anything goes wrong with a purchase but you lose that protection by having PayPal involved (that is, unless the purchase was made with PayPal Credit). Where eBay is concerned I'm not sure you can use Section 75 as eBay are acting as an intermediary which likely breaks the direct debtor-creditor-supplier link in the same way that having PayPal involved does. However, you would still have standard chargeback protection if PayPal wasn't involved in an eBay purchase which would give you 120 days to file an "item not as described" chargeback claim instead of PayPal's 30 days following delivery.

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

suzpoodles — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:13:37 GMT

Thanks again to the last two posters, but none of the PayPal articles are relevant to this new issue.

All the threads on this topic go round and round in circles. In truth, no one seems to know the answer right now, including the banks, PayPal and eBay. All deny knowledge.
Hopefully these new charges will eventually stop as mysteriously as they started!

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

4_bathrooms — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 21:42:43 GMT

@suzpoodles wrote:
All the threads on this topic go round and round in circles. In truth, no one seems to know the answer right now, including the banks, PayPal and eBay. All deny knowledge.

All your bank knows is there is a "pending" payment of £1 - pending meaning the payment is in the pre-authorisation stage - made against your card.

eBay never had your card details to make such a charge as you chose PayPal as the payment method at checkout so eBay are not going to know anything about it.

Therefore PayPal must be making these £1 pre-authorisation charges. As pointed out, PayPal state they do this and in the UK the amount they use for such charges is £1. This is unlikely to be some sort of coincidence.

You could stop it all by not using PayPal in the manner that you do. You could instead use your card to create a PayPal balance of the amount required for the payment then select "PayPal balance" as the funding source when checking out on eBay. Or, you could stop using PayPal for eBay purchases and use your card directly instead which would also give you much better protection should anything ever go wrong with a purchase.

Anyway...I'll bow out of this thread now.

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

sueg0154 — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 15:53:08 GMT

happened to me three times today. £3 . Not a fortune but it's the principle!

Talk about round and round with ebay .... they asked me to send them a picture of the statement

to a certain email address which of course they then said doesn't exsist for this ....

It's so annoying.

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

sml192 — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 18:48:31 GMT

@sueg0154 wrote:
happened to me three times today. £3 . Not a fortune but it's the principle!
Talk about round and round with ebay .... they asked me to send them a picture of the statement
to a certain email address which of course they then said doesn't exsist for this ....
It's so annoying.

It is nothing to do with eBay. They have no involvement in the payment method used to fund PayPal.

The charges should only be showing on your bank/card account as 'Pending'. They are pre-authorisation charges and won't actually be taken. They should disappear once the actual payment for the item is finalised.

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

sueg0154 — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 19:11:02 GMT

Thanks - it’s not something I’m happy with. But thanks for the advice and heads up.

Re: Additional £1 charged seperately

suzpoodles — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 19:11:02 GMT

It’s all very well and good for replies to keep saying they’re “pre-authorisation” charges, but the question still remains WHY? Why, when these are old cards and nothing has changed. And also bear in mind that PayPal, so far, also doesn’t have any answers when challenged.