PayPal Billing Plan doesn't allow users to use PayPal balance - paypal

Question

I setup a PayPal plan with a trialing period of 1 month.
When users sign-up for the Billing Agreement, they are unable to use their PayPal balance.
Is there any reason why that would happen? I read on one forum that PayPal may force users to use a card or bank account when the Billing Plan is setup incorrectly, however I don't think that is the case.
My REST call to setup the plan:
curl -v -X POST https://api.paypal.com/v1/payments/billing-plans/ \
-H "Content-Type:application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <Access Key>" \
-d '{
"name": "Plan",
"description": "Plan desc",
"type": "FIXED",
"payment_definitions": [
{
"name": "Regular payment definition",
"type": "REGULAR",
"frequency": "MONTH",
"frequency_interval": "1",
"amount": {
"value": "45",
"currency": "USD"
},
"cycles": "12",
"charge_models": [
]
},
{
"name": "Trial payment definition",
"type": "TRIAL",
"frequency": "MONTH",
"frequency_interval": "1",
"amount": {
"value": "0",
"currency": "USD"
},
"cycles": "1",
"charge_models": [
]
}
],
"merchant_preferences": {
"return_url": "http://www.paypal.com",
"cancel_url": "http://www.paypal.com/cancel",
"auto_bill_amount": "YES",
"initial_fail_amount_action": "CANCEL",
"max_fail_attempts": "0"
}
}'
Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Talked to PayPal support.
Turns out this is intended behavior. To protect the merchants PayPal requires customers to have at least one additional payment method other than their PayPal Balance.
Therefore, if they do not they cannot subscribe. However, one thing I'd like to mention is that even though they require this, according to the representative, the PayPal Balance will always be used first.