How to Export PayPal Customer Emails to a List (When PayPal Has No Customer Export)

PayPal has no customer export, but its activity download lists the payer's email address on every incoming payment, so that file is your customer list. Download it as CSV for a custom date range, keep only incoming payments, drop your own address, fees, transfers and refunds, merge repeat buyers into one row each, and check the addresses before you import anything into an email tool. Because paying you isn't an opt-in, decide who you may market to before the first send.

The free PayPal customers to email list tool does the filtering and merging in your browser. Here's how each step works.

Step 1: download the activity report

PayPal's help article on viewing and downloading statements and reports (read 2 November 2026) gives the steps:

1. Go to your activity history.
2. Click the Download icon.
3. Click Custom.
4. Select the report that suits you and follow the prompts for the date range.
5. When the report is ready, click Download. Choose CSV rather than PDF, Quicken or QuickBooks.

Business accounts may also see it under Reports > Activity download; menu names differ by account type and country.

PayPal's developer page on the activity download report sets the limits: history back up to 7 years, at most 12 months per report, and 50,000 records per CSV file, with bigger reports split into a ZIP. Large reports can take a while to prepare. For several years of buyers, download one year at a time and combine the files; the PayPal tool accepts several pasted together.

Step 2: keep the payments, drop the rest

The download is a ledger, not a customer list. According to the developer docs, every row has a Name, Type, Status, Gross, From Email Address ("the email address of the buyer") and To Email Address, among about 80 possible columns. Payments in and out, refunds, fees, bank withdrawals, currency conversions and holds all share the file.

Row	Keep?
Incoming payment, donation, subscription or invoice payment, completed	Yes: the From address is your customer
Payment you sent	No: the From address is you
Fee, transfer to bank, currency conversion, hold	No
Refund or reversal	Mark the buyer; set aside if you don't want to mail refunded customers
Pending only	Set aside until it completes

Your own address appears on almost every row, as To on money in and From on money out. Leave it out, or you'll be the most frequent customer on your own list.

Step 3: merge repeat buyers

Someone who paid you twelve times has twelve rows. Keep one row per address with the payment count and total, which is useful for a "best customers" segment. Watch for the same person under two addresses, one personal and one for work; the duplicate contact finder matches them by name.

The address is the buyer's PayPal login, which may not be the inbox they read every day, and some guest or marketplace payments carry no buyer email at all.

Step 4: decide who you may email

PayPal's documented columns have no opt-in field, so the file can't tell you who agreed to marketing. Two sets of rules apply:

• The law where your buyers are. In the US, the FTC's CAN-SPAM guide allows commercial email without prior opt-in if it identifies you, includes your postal address and an opt-out you honour. In the UK and EU, the soft opt-in only covers similar products to customers who were given a chance to refuse when they bought. Canada needs consent.
• PayPal's terms. PayPal's US user agreement has a section on how you may use information about other PayPal users; earlier published versions said you may not use it for marketing without that user's express consent. Read the current agreement for your account and country before building a promotional list from it.

Receipts, delivery updates and replies to questions aren't marketing. For a newsletter, the cleanest route is to email buyers once with a link to opt in, or to add a sign-up checkbox to your checkout going forward. Every message needs a footer with an opt-out and your address; our post on what a CAN-SPAM footer needs lists the items.

Step 5: check the addresses

Old PayPal logins go stale: people change jobs, close accounts and abandon inboxes. Mailing years of buyers at once from a new email account is a quick way to a high bounce rate.

1. Download the merged payer list from the PayPal tool.
2. Upload it on the verify page. Every address gets a live mailbox check, and valid, risky and invalid download as separate files.
3. Import the valid file into your email platform, with a note of where each address came from.

A check tells you whether a mailbox exists, not whether the buyer consented. Risky means unconfirmed: catch-all business domains and Microsoft's consumer domains (outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com) often can't be confirmed either way. Our post on mailing an old email list covers pacing the first sends to an older list.

Where SimpleVerifier fits

Filtering and merging are free and run in your browser; nothing is uploaded. For the mailbox check, upload the list on the verify page; the first 100 checks are free with a Google sign-in. Starter is $9 a month for 2,500 checks; Pro is $39 a month with the first 100,000 checks a month at full speed, then slower, never cut off. See pricing.