I don't have a PayPal account. Why did I get an email from PayPal that I received a payment?

PayPal is an account-based system that allows people to send online payments to anyone with an email address or mobile number.

If you received an email from us, someone may have sent a payment to you. You can accept the payment by clicking Sign Up on any PayPal web page. If you don’t have a PayPal account, you’ll need to create one before you can accept the payment. If you decide not to sign up for an account, we’ll refund the money back to the sender.

To report a suspicious email or website, forward it to phishing@paypal.com and we’ll investigate it for you. After you send us the email, delete it from your inbox.

To add an additional layer of confidence when receiving a payment, we now provide the sender of funds the option to share a link directly with the recipient that the recipient can use to access and redeem their money. 

The payment link connects the recipient of funds to a PayPal page that tells the recipient they have pending money and need to have or create a PayPal account with a confirmed email address to claim the money.