European banks have seen widespread unauthorised direct debits from PayPal accounts, the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV) says. The German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) reports that payments worth about 10 billion euros (£8.6bn) had to be blocked after PayPal's fraud-checking system failed. Payments were paused on Monday when lenders reported millions of suspicious direct debits from the payment firm. The DSGV confirmed to the BBC there had been incidents involving unauthorized direct debits initiated by PayPal against various credit institutions. The BBC has approached PayPal for comment. According to Reuters, PayPal acknowledged that certain transactions from banking partners and potentially their customers were affected by a temporary service interruption. We quickly identified the cause and are working closely with our banking partners to ensure that all accounts have been updated, a PayPal spokesperson said. The DSGV noted that PayPal had acknowledged the disruptions and assured that the issue was resolved, with payment transactions to and from PayPal operating normally again. However, they emphasized that these incidents had significant effects on payment transactions across Europe, particularly in Germany. The supervisory authorities have also been informed of the occurrences at PayPal. This incident highlights the need for stringent fraud detection measures, as PayPal aims to filter out scams before they reach banks. However, the company's filter system reportedly misfired, allowing unchecked direct debits to be processed alongside legitimate transactions. Following the reports, shares in PayPal dropped by 1.9%.