This story started from a dinner. In the last episode of the podcast Dyeing he was there as a guest Francesca AlbaneseUnited Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. Stefano Raponeone of the hosts, said he had previously been to an evening in Rome where Albanese was always a guest. Here Valerio Lundinipresent among the guests, had decided to send a payment via PayPal to a friend of theirs with the reference “Dinner evening Francesca Albanese”. The payment was blocked by the platform.
Now. Obviously we don’t know if Lundini’s friend is still waiting for this payment or if it was just a hook to introduce the theme of the sanctions that hit Albanese. The experiment, however, is simple to replicate. Just send one small amount on PayPal and insert a formula with the words “Francesca Albanese”.
He did it Chiara Bannellaa woman who works in the communications team of Ethical Bank. In a post that went viral on LinkedIn she explained that she had sent a euro to a friend of hers with the reason “support for #FrancescaAlbanese”. The money never arrived: “The payment was immediately suspended and – after a few days – this morning PayPal wrote to me that my account is blocked.”
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Our test with PayPal payments
We did some teststo check. Payments with reference Francesca Albanese they have some problems. We tried sending a one euro payment with three reasons: one with the name of Francesca Albaneseone with a generic reason such as “Party” and one with the name of a colleague.
The one with “Francesca Albanese” written in the reason for payment was blocked immediately, as you can see from the screenshot below. Only later was it reactivated. The others, however, were all successful. We tried other times. Payments with reason “Francesca Albanese” they were always blocked at first. Some stayed put, others moved forward.
FANPAGE.IT | PayPal’s response after payment with the reason Francesca Albanese
The sanctions against Francesca Albanese
Net of the case PayPalthe point most likely concerns the sanctions that the United States has imposed on Francesca Albanese. A decision that came after Albanese presented a report denouncing companies that support the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Many of the companies in the report were based in the United States. Due to these sanctions Francesca Albanese is currently unable to open a account in a bankneither American nor Italian.
The general director of Banca Etica explained this to Avvenire, Nazzareno Gabrielli: “When a person is registered on that list, their name is immediately intercepted when they open a current account and the operation is automatically blocked. We therefore had to exclude the possibility of opening an account for Francesca Albanese”.
If we start from these sanctions then we can find different ones points in the PayPal terms of use which could explain the problems we have seen. For example in activities not permitted also states: “Violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation (for example, those regulating financial services, consumer protection, unfair competition, discrimination or false advertising)”.
