The PlayStation Network (PSN) has added the function to add funds to users’ “wallets” (online, not from the PSN) via PayPal in North America. This new policy happened suspiciously close in tandem with the latest PSN three day downtime, extended from the originally reported 12 hours.

As was reported by IGN.com, the PlayStation Network was down from January 17-19, from approximately 11 AM EST this past Thursday to today, Saturday, at 5 AM EST. The original tweet from PlayStation’s twitter reads as follows:

Sony followed through with multiple twitter updates announcing the delay of the PSN coming back into full functionality. This frustrated many players looking to play online or purchase content in the PSN store.

Sony fans may remember the PSN outage of 2011, in which hackers forced Sony to disable their online services for 24 days. Sony admitted that the hackers had potentially gained access to sensitive credit card information stored on PSN’s servers. In the midst of the panic surrounding the rumors of what was happening, Sony released the following statement:

If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.

It was reported that millions of users were potentially threatened by the information the hackers obtained. Thankfully, Sony Corporation of America CEO and President Howard Stringer said in a letter on the PlayStation blog that as of May of 2011, there weren’t any reported credit card thefts as a result of the network hacking.

In response, Sony instated a “Welcome back program” that allowed all PSN users two free downloads of full games, such as Infamous or Wipeout.

It is not confirmed whether or not the extended downtime the PSN recently experienced had anything to do with fraudulent users. However, when the 2011 downtime happened, it took Sony several days to officially report that the disabling of the PSN was a result of malicious users; Sony’s response to that criticism was explained in the PlayStation blog here.

As was reported by IGN.com, the ability to use PayPal to add funds to a user’s wallet on the PSN has been available in Europe for some time, but recently was added into North America’s functionality. Through PayPal, users can rest assured that their credit card information is not under threat of being stolen directly from the PSN, as it was in the 2011 outage.

Instructions on how to add funds through PayPal for the PSN are available from IGN here:

-Login at SonyEntertainmentNetwork.com
-Click “Add Funds to Wallet” from the Account Management screen
-Click “Add Funds to Wallet” on the next screen
-And there’s PayPal

Unfortunately, it is currently impossible to add funds via PayPal on a PlayStation system or handheld.