Notice to other FA admins - submission okayed by  summercat. Please check user history for verification.Due to FA's image dimension restriction, I had to massivly shrink and re-format this version to fit into FA's limitations. You can view the full, properly formatted version here: http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a.....aypal-full.jpg

On hidden comments: I read every comment and reply to those that require replies, however since there is a lot of irrelevant chit chat and same post comments, I have gone through and hidden comments that are not discussion or relevant information on the issue. I hope this will make finding information and starting discussions in the comments easier to do.

If this has been helpful to you, I encourage you to share it with your friends so that they too may reap the benefits of safe commissioning.

Moar advice:
_{I will edit this section as more questions come up}1. "...by using the "invoice" function, you're agreeing to give PayPal that 2.9% + 30 cent cut of your revenue. When people send you payments under the "friends and family" option and fund those without using a credit card, then PayPal receives no cut.

Would it not be more prudent - and more profitable - to instruct commissioners on how to properly word a gift payment as to not fall under scrutiny with PayPal? "

You can never control what your commissioner is going to say. By selecting "send as gift" or other options, you are breaking their ToS and you will be so very banned if they catch you doing this, it seems pointless to me to add one MORE rule you are breaking in the pursuit of saving literally a few dollars. It only takes one slip up for it to happen. I have seen this happen and never advise people to tell people to send as anything but a service.

Never try to stretch your definition of "friend and family" and hope that "teeechnicly it COULD be your friend depending on your definition heheh" will fly. Paypal will not split hairs with you. If they decide that this person does not qualify to be your friend, their judgment is final. If you are constantly doing this with your commissions, it is going to be really bloody obvious that you are lying at even the quickest glance at your transaction history. These transactions are how paypal makes money, if they even think you are trying to rip them off, they will drop you without a second thought. After all, you're just dead weight if you're not paying your dues.

If you are concerned about paypal's cut and really really want that 50 cents to $2 they might take from it, include it in the price of the commission and all of these problems go away

It is against Paypal's ToS to charge an exact % to cover their fees (for some reason) so if you are worried about it, it is best to just add a flat $ increase to your actual commission prices (instead of charging $5 charge $6). The fees are so small on transactions that it's really not worth worrying about.

Paypal also limits the number of "gifts" any one person can send, gifts are also unavailable to accounts from many countries. If your commissioner asks that you send your payment as a gift, I strongly suggest that you refuse. When this person gets caught (and they will) anyone else participating in this fraud (you) will get banned as well. There really is no logical reason to ask or demand that someone do this for the 1.9 - 2.9% + 30cents (max) fee is not going to make or break a commission. The fees on a $100 commission is $3.20 USD. I pay more than that for postage on cheques. This is really not worth getting in trouble over, just pay the fees you agreed to pay for use of the service you are receiving.

More reasons never to send as gift as a buyer: Aside from the fact that you are committing fraud and will be just as at fault as the person telling you to do it when the banhammer comes to town, gifts are not "buyer protected" by paypal. WHat this means is that if your commission artist decides they're going to be a fuck wit and screw you over that paypal will not help you if they run off with your money. You are not a buyer, the money was a "gift" so they don't owe you anything.2. "Soo....if I start taking donations for my children's book to help with publishing costs, and 100 people send me "Gifts" transactions in a relatively short span of time (say, 2 months), they'll flag my account for fee evasion despite the fact that they are all truly Gifts? [...] They weren't buying "tickets"..i was rather specific about it in the journal, and only mentioned the word "raffle" (in response to a comment.) Anyways, one fellow wrote "donation/raffle" in the memo slot and paypal demanded I shut it down, "or else serious legal matters will be pursued..."

The safest way to receive donations is to set up a donation link with paypal, all payments will be registered as donations and you won't have to worry about hitting your gift limit or looking suspicious or having a user throw the word "raffle" or something you don't even know might red-flag you. If you set up a donation link for people to use, you can have it registered as whatever name you want and disallow comments to be posted in the memo.

You can create donation links in "Merchant Services" tab and selecting the "Donate" option from the "Create Buttons" column. After you fill out your "button info" and create button it will give you a code. Above that code are the tabs "website" and "e-mail". Click on "email" and it will give you the direct link to your donation page for people to use and you can use it anywhere (assuming you want a direct URL and not an actual paypal button).

Do note, however, that raffle and other "lottery" type activity is very strictly against Paypal's TOS3. "I always just tell my commissioners what to post in the comments or tell them to leave them blank, there's no need to do this."

I have taken hundreds, if not thousands of commissions via paypal over the past 10 or so years and for the most part telling them "Do not post anything" works out fine, but every once and a while, I get a commissioner who disregards my request and posts whatever they want. I do not draw anything that could possibly be misconstrued as against Paypal's ToS and have not taken commissions over FA using the old method so this has never ended badly for me. This is, unfortunately, not true for several people here on FA who have lost their accounts, despite also not breaking any ToS due to how comments where interpreted by paypal. All it takes is one person to say "Commission from FurAffintiy", for the rep checking it out to type "www.furaffinity.com", seeing something they don't like on the page and assuming that's what you're doing.

You can tell your commissioners anything you want, but at the end of the day, it is still up to them what they want to type into that box. When commissioners do this, they're not thinking "haha I'm going to rebel against their wishes", they're thinking "I want this commissioner to remember my request" or "I forgot to emphasize this" or "I will be nice and thank them!" or sometimes they even just forget.4. "So, I went hunting through settings, and I found an option to block commissioners from sending you money except in response to an invoice. Basically, if they try to do it the wrong way, it doesn't work. They have to send money in response to a payment request like the one you've so kindly showed us how to send.

The option is in kind of a back menu, the path I took to find it was:
My Account > Profile > My Selling Tools > Credit Card Statement Name > Block payment from users who: [x] Initiate payments from the Pay Anyone subtab of the Send Money tab

Here's a direct link to the menu where the option exists: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/customerprofileweb?cmd=_profile-pref&#ccName
The option appears to only be available on a business account." - Ataraxis