Artega vs PayPal

PayPal held a 22-year customer's account for six months, then seized $26,984 from it without explanation. That's the risk you're weighing every time a client pays through PayPal instead of Artega.

Money: PayPal can freeze and eventually seize funds outright, as in the case above. Artega never holds your money at any point, so there's nothing on our end to freeze.

Your name: PayPal shows a seller's real name to buyers by default. Artega doesn't ask for your legal name at all, only the name you choose to trade under.

What kind of work is allowed: PayPal's terms carry provisions that permit account closure over the kind of work this pillar covers. Artega only asks whether the work is legal, not whether PayPal personally approves of it.

Business accounts: If you're a registered company, PayPal does have a trading-name field, but sellers report it's unreliably honoured: your legal or bank-linked name can still show on the receipt page, in email receipts, and on login-page links, even with a trading name set. And if you register with PayPal using your company name to work around this, anyone can look up your company's director names and registered addresses for free on Companies House. Trading as a company doesn't solve the privacy problem; it just moves the exposure from PayPal's checkout screen to a public government register. Artega never asks for your legal name at all, so there's nothing to leak either way.

Getting set up: PayPal is understood to follow a self-serve sign-up model, though this rests on general reputation rather than a directly sourced policy document. Artega gives every new seller a 1:1 concierge onboarding call with an actual person.

Booking: PayPal is payments-only; you'd need a third-party plugin just to take a booking. Artega has booking, deposits, and payment in one flow from the start.

Sources: Engadget: the PayPal seizure lawsuit · PayPal seller display-name help · Companies House public register · Setmore on third-party booking integrations