I had quite a bizarre experience today, I thought I would share.
In forwarding a PayPal transaction for a monome aleph today (so excited! 
), I received this message to my email almost immediately:
“Regulations require us to take a closer look at some transactions. Your payment is temporarily pending while we review it.”
Hmm, never seen that before. So, I searched the phrase and it turns out this message isn’t the usual pending message you receive on a payment.
Now, I’m not one for conspiracy, but this just stuck out and I had to dig deeper!
Some further research revealed it was a sort of “random” security check, which PayPal performs on transactions. Typically international. Many of the reports I was reading had to do with using words like, “Cuba”, “Military” etc. included in the item description or message during checkout.
I called PayPal, and after waiting for what seemed like an hour informed me, “Ah! Yes. This is simply because this amount is higher than your usual purchases etc.”… which didn’t add up, especially after reading over my transaction records with the representative. (I need to stop buying so much gear 
).
Now the conversation moved into this security check business, and that indeed it was for security reasons it was pending. Which security? Mine? The seller’s? Earth’s? She would not specify.
I got to the point and finally asked if it was indeed the word “Aleph”, after I explained the purchase, to which I got a “Yes.”. Plain and simple. I was surprised they gave it to me that straight!
I asked if they thought it was a little strange given the word’s origin etc. and they just stated that these measures are for security blah blah.
She assured me that it would clear after 24 hours and that the transaction would complete normally (we’ll see…) Weird!
Anyone experience anything similar to this before? Do share!