German banks blocked PayPal payments totalling more than 10 billion euros ($11.7 billion) over fraud concerns, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported. The payments were halted on Monday after lenders flagged millions of suspicious direct debits from PayPal that appeared last week, the newspaper said. A PayPal spokesperson said a temporary service interruption had affected “certain transactions from our banking partners and potentially their customers”, but that the issue had now been resolved. A banking source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the value of payments stopped by banks fell somewhere between hundreds of millions and billions of euros. PayPal has a security system that usually filters out scams trying to extract money from banks. But the Sueddeutsche Zeitung said that system was either completely or largely disrupted late last week, meaning the payments app was sending unvetted direct debits to banks. Germany’s Savings Banks and Giro Association, representing more than 300 local savings banks and financial service providers, said that instances of unauthorised direct debits from PayPal had a “significant impact on payment transactions” throughout Europe, and particularly in Germany. The association added that PayPal transactions for customers at Sparkasse banks were operating normally as of early on Tuesday and said supervisory authorities had been informed of the incidents.