Occasionally, for whatever reason, a person will send a payment through PayPal to the wrong e-mail address.

This problem can be caused at times by the payment receiver (often known as the "seller" fat fingers his own address, a glitch in an eBay tool such as Turbo Lister (this can happen often when a seller changes his or her e-mail address and TL still puts in the old address into listings), or when the buyer mistypes the e-mail address they want to send money to.

Whatever the reason, if you sent the money to a non existent address, you can get the payment cancelled quickly instead of having to wait several weeks for PayPal to cancel the transaction and refund you your money.

First, you need to log into your PayPal account.  You should do this as soon as you are aware of the problem.

From your account page you will see the payment you tried sending to the wrong e-mail address and in the far right/action column you will see the word "cancel" two columns right of the status column that reads "unclaimed"

Click onto the "cancel' button and the following screen will appear

Click onto "Cancel Payment" and the following screen will appear:

If you used a PayPal balance to fund the payment you just cancelled, the money should re-appear in your PayPal account shortly.  If you used another funding method, the money may not appear to be available for 3 to 5 business days.

When you return to your account summary page, notice the change in the payment line we just cancelled.

Regardless of what the cause of the problem was, you should notify the person you were trying to send money to that you had cancelled the payment and when he or she should expect payment from you.  You may also want to either ask them to send you a new invoice with the correct payment e-mail address or request them to send you the e-mail address that they want the payment sent to.