[HaZeust]

Sortaaa. There's several financial regulations invoked in the USA that requires financial institutions to ask for proper identification IF continuance of business is pursued. However, there is nothing - to my knowledge - that compels PayPal to hold these identification vectors as "ransom" for an account held hostage from closure.

Enlighten me if my knowledge has gone amiss.

[judge2020]

The thing is that having an account open at all is presumably because you intend to use PayPal at some point in the future. They could keep an account in an 'inactive' state but then that just moves the identity requirement further along to whenever the user tries to check out with PayPal once or move money.

[asdff]

GP doesn't want the account to be open, they've requested to close it and paypal has refused to close it because they demand information needed for an open account in order to, presumably, reactivate the account with all relevant identifying documents submitted for the moments it must take in order to close it, because they've developed a technical process that requires accounts be open and in good standing in order to be closed. Which given this situation is a ridiculous design decision unless you are interested in maintaining these data after the account should close.