PayPal Website Goes Down, API Unavailable For Many [Updated]

Updates at foot of post:

PayPal is currently being reported by users as widely inaccessible right now. Some users are reporting it as having been unavailable for as long as 45 minutes or an hour at the time of writing.

With the service being a key e-commerce tool, such downtime is a major frustration for both merchants and customers.

In October last year, PayPal’s systems, but not its website, suffered downtime. This time the website itself is completely inaccessible but it’s unclear at present if backend systems are in full working order or not. We have approached PayPal for comment.

UPDATE: We’re hearing from users that PayPal’s systems can still be accessed via apps that use its API and that payments are still being processed – it’s just the website itself that is inaccessible.

UPDATE 2: PayPal’s developer blog notes that in actual fact, payments via the API are also unavailable for most customers and “At this time, there is no alternative work-around.”

UPDATE 3: PayPal’s developer blog now says, exactly one hour after it first acknowledged the fault, that it has been resolved, meaning that everything should be back to normal for all users. If we hear from the company about the reason behind this downtime, we’ll let you know.