The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that a PayPal email promising a £10 reward for customers who used their account didn't make it sufficiently clear that not everyone would receive it.
The organisation has upheld a complaint from a recipient of the email, with the offer in fact limited to the first 28,527 people who responded.
While PayPal has insisted this was made clear in the terms and conditions, the ASA has ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form.
In its ruling, the organisation said: "We considered that consumers were likely to understand from the subject line and headline claim that they would receive credit worth £10 from PayPal, and the subsequent qualification was insufficient to counter that impression, so we concluded that the ad was misleading and breached the code."
In its own defence, PayPal insisted the marketing correspondence was "designed to inform customers about the availability of the offer and included all significant qualifications and conditions".
The email itself - which was received by customers on September 19 - included the greeting: "Long time no see. Here's a £10 reward for you!"
Meanwhile, the main claim in the body stated: "We're giving you £10 to use online with PayPal".
The offer being limited to the first 28,527 people was stated in small print below.
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