Now, all that said, if you don’t have a Paypal account, or have not used it during the time that the transaction occurred, or otherwise don’t remember a purchase that correlates to that entry on your bank statement, by all means you should contact your bank, as it’s still entirely possible that it is fraudulant. Then it correctly listed information about the transaction, including amount and recipient name, but it didn't ever actually give me the option to verify, instead telling me to login to my. But that’s what that charge with the phone number 40 is. A few minutes after I completed the transaction I got a call from 402 935-7733, with a robot saying they were PayPal and I needed to verify the transaction. So, these are some of the ways how you may encounter the number 40 on your card statement. We agree that they do a poor job of making that clear (and to be fair, it may be out of their hands in terms of how it shows up on your statement). If that is the case, then when you spend with your credit card, the number 40 may appear on your card statement because technically, PayPal is the biller of the payment. It is Paypal using your backup billing method to cover the shortfall because you dont’ have enough in your Paypal account. Remember way back when, when you signed up for Paypal, and you had to provide a bank account or credit card as a backup billing method? That’s what that charge is. This is how it appears on your bank statement or credit card transactions when you pay for something via Paypal, or something is otherwise charged to your Paypal account (such as through an automatic transaction, or using your Paypal debit card, for example), and you don’t actually have enough in your Paypal account to cover the charge. If you have been reviewing your bank records or credit card statement, and have found what you believe to be an unauthorized charge or charges that shows “Paypal” and the phone number 40, take a deep breath, and relax.