If you've signed up for PayPal Express Checkout using the Accelerated Boarding option in the Payment Wizard or the Payment Center, you must complete the onboarding process with PayPal at their web site before you can collect funds for orders placed using PayPal as the payment method. Onboarding must be completed within 30 days of receiving an order for which PayPal was the payment method, or order funds will be returned to the customer.

You have signed up for Accelerated Boarding with PayPal if, when applying for a Bank of America Merchant Services account, you also chose not to opt-out of signing up for PayPal Express Checkout and submitted an email address to receive payments via PayPal (Figure 1). While submitting your email address began the onboarding process with PayPal, allowing you to offer PayPal as a payment method in checkout, a "pending" status indicates that you did not complete the onboarding process with PayPal, and will not be able to receive order funds until the onboarding process has been completed.

Onboarding with PayPal must be completed at their web site.

Figure 1. PayPal Accelerated Boarding option.