Send multiple payments with Payouts: the PayPal mass pay option.

So when you need to streamline your selling process and manage mass payments - perhaps to send rebates, commissions, rewards or incentives-to a group of users, there are tools that make it easy. 
 
The PayPal mass pay option, Payouts, is one such solution. The account holder can easily send money to multiple people at the same time, and the recipients will receive the funds in their PayPal account. You can send up to 15,000 payments at once with the API or 10,000 with batch upload and a single click, saving you a lot of time.
 
PayPal Payouts benefits.

• Reduced friction for your customers: You can pay your customers with just email or phone number. They can access their funds quickly so they can spend or withdraw them.
• Simplify international payments: Send disbursements globally in 24 currencies to recipients in 156 countries.
• Cost effective: The sender pays a fee when sending; it's free for recipients to receive their funds.
• Simple integration: The Payouts API uses industry-standard RESTful services and is straightforward to integrate.
• Reduce your risk: PayPal risk and compliance controls help protect you from fraud.

Payouts is best used to send small- to medium-sized payments to a large number of people at once. It works best with certain industries and situations, including:

• Retail or e-commerce: A marketplace may need to make hundreds of seller payouts.
• Financial services: A bank needs to disburse payments on behalf of their clients.
• The gig economy: Businesses may need to pay hundreds of contingent workers, sometimes in multiple currencies.
• Service providers: Insurance companies paying bonuses for referrals.
• Media: Newspapers incentivizing mobile readership.
• Reseller: A retailer may need to pay a food manufacturer for the end product.
• Non-profits: A well-known non-profit has to pay relief aid to service providers during a natural disaster.

How to start sending mass payments.
Setting up Payouts is a developer-friendly process. The Payouts API uses industry-standard RESTful services. Or a sender can simply upload a spreadsheet with receiver info and payment amounts (if they vary).
 
A PayPal Business account is required and payouts need to be enabled. To get Payouts, you must have a merchant account and sign up for the service by calling 1-888-221-1161.

You'll also want to ensure your account has money to cover all transactions, including fees. Your PayPal balance must be used and a bank transfer can fund the account, but debit and credit cards cannot be used to fund mass payments.

Step 1 
Make sure that the email address associated with your Business account has been verified. Then, upload a file that includes the customers' email addresses or phone numbers and how much you want to pay (be sure to include the three-letter currency code). Payouts payments can be sent in 24 major currencies.​

Step 2
Review your payout details before completing your transaction.

Step 3
Click "Send Payout." Now your customers can collect their money (once they open a PayPal account).   
Important things to note.

• Individual payments cannot exceed USD $20,000.
• There are fees associated with mass payments¹:
  • For domestic payments made through our website, the fee is only 2% per payment and capped at $1.25 CAD.
  • For payouts made through our API, it's just $0.32 CAD per Canadian transaction
  • For international payments, the 2% of the payment amount to each recipient, up to a certain amount. Learn more about international fees.
  • No fee is charged to the recipient.

How to troubleshoot a mass payment transaction.
If your transaction fails to begin processing, check the following:

• Do you have sufficient funds in your account?
• Have you verified that all information in your mass payment file is correct? For example: valid email address, all payments paired with an email address and proper file format.
• Are you trying to process too many payments at one time?
• Do any of your payments exceed the maximum limit?
• Have you confirmed the email address associated with your PayPal Business account?
• Are you using incorrect user reference IDs?
  • ID codes may not include spaces or exceed 30 characters.
• Have you included a custom note that does not meet the requirements?
  • Custom notes must not exceed 4,000 characters
• ​Is this going to utilized in non-Canadian countries as well? One question that we often get from Europe is about formatting the account since they use commas as decimal separators.
  • The normal CSV file should look like this: sample@example.com,1000.55,id,note.
  • If a comma is used as a decimal separator, then it needs to look like this: sample@example.com,"1000,55",EUR,id,note.

How to check a mass payment status.

The status of any mass payments can be found in your transaction history, including whether they're processing, denied, processed or completed.

You can also access additional information by reviewing our FAQs page.