PayPal had 439 million active accounts and handled $486 billion of payments between April and June 2026, according to its results. In the UK, it has nearly 30 million customers, and PayPal UK Ltd is authorised by the FCA.
Checkout options
PayPal Checkout adds the PayPal button, and the expanded version adds card fields, Apple Pay and Google Pay under the same account. For larger businesses, Braintree offers full checkout and payment processing.
UK shoppers can spread the cost with Pay in 3, three interest-free payments, and since July 2026 with Pay in 30 Days, which needed no new integration for sellers already using PayPal.
Seller Protection
Seller Protection covers sellers against unauthorized transaction and item-not-received claims. To qualify, the parcel has to go to the address on the transaction, with tracked proof of delivery kept on file.
Withdrawals to a UK bank are sent by the end of the next business day, with Instant Transfer available too.
One balance per currency
A PayPal business account can hold money in several currencies at once. When a payment arrives in a currency the account doesn’t hold yet, PayPal accepts it in that currency by default and opens a new balance for it. The setting can be changed in the account’s Wallet.
So a seller with customers in Ireland and the US can end up holding euros and dollars next to the sterling balance, each one moving on its own until somebody converts or withdraws it. Xero’s PayPal feed imports the transactions each day, ready for reconciliation, and the books usually treat each currency balance as an account of its own. Moving money between two balances is then a transfer between two accounts, with any conversion cost booked against it.
Held funds and disputes in the books
Some PayPal money arrives before it can be spent. A seller who’s new, or selling again after a long gap, has their first payments held for up to 21 days. When a buyer opens a dispute through PayPal, the disputed payment is held until it’s resolved, then released to the seller or refunded to the buyer.
For the books, a held payment is a sale that’s happened with money that can’t be withdrawn yet. Sales and cash run apart until the hold lifts. Invoices paid through the Pay Now button on a Xero invoice are marked paid automatically, but orders from a web shop have no Xero invoice behind them, so they’re posted from the PayPal transactions themselves, refunds included.
PayPal’s REST APIs
PayPal’s REST APIs cover orders, captures and refunds, payouts, and disputes, where evidence can be submitted directly. The Transaction Search API looks back over three years of activity, in windows of up to 31 days.
Apps sign in with OAuth client credentials, and every developer account comes with sandbox accounts for testing. Webhooks cover events like a completed capture or a new dispute, can be verified, and are retried up to 25 times over three days.
For reconciliation, PayPal delivers transaction and balance reports by SFTP or through its reporting dashboard.
Shopping through AI
In June 2026, PayPal and Hey Savi launched what they call the UK’s first agentic commerce platform, with Debenhams Group as the first retailer.
PayPal also runs its own MCP server, hosted or run locally, so a merchant can ask an AI assistant to list last month’s invoices or raise a new one.
Balances, disputes and the books
PayPal’s REST APIs and webhooks cover most of what the books and the order system need. Each currency balance can post to its own Xero account, a new dispute can pull the tracking and proof of delivery from the shipping system before the deadline, and each order’s PayPal fee can come off its margin.
Held funds and disputes are where sales and cash drift apart, so they’re worth tracking automatically. If PayPal balances in several currencies still get matched to orders by hand every month, the reconciliation red flag is the one to read first.