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PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

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Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#161

Post by projektfu »

mrep wrote: post #137
projektfu wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people say "monopoly" when they mean "cartel". Are you arguing that these companies do not have substantial market power compared to more competitive markets or are you just trying to distract from the discussion with an argument over definitions? Do we see Mastercard and Visa competing on price (e.g. interchange rates)?

Having 4 main companies (mastercard, visa, discover, and american express) doesn't make you a monopoly or cartel. Obviously, they do have more market power than purely competitive environments but they do compete a lot on rewards which cut into the profitability of those interchange rates. I cannot find any source to measure the interchange fees - rewards profitability but I did find one that shows most of their prof…

Rewards are entirely paid for by higher interchange rates. If a card is paying a 1% reward of some sort, it is also costing the merchant at least 1% more than non-reward cards at the interchange level. A lot of this is hidden by services like Stripe and Square that have flat fees for merchants (which are higher than any interchange fee) and also by processing ISOs that hide the interchange rates in their own synthetic flat fees. Nevertheless, the interchange rates are easily googled and differ somewhat based on merchant industry and size (market power again). Convenience stores successfully banded together and negotiated a lower rate for their industry. National-scale grocery chains also pay less. Again, not an example of a competitive market. The most effective means to cap rates has been legislation (e.g. the Durbin amendment and efforts in the EU.) because of the cartel-like behavior of the market participants to keep prices high and compete on "features".

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#162

Post by [deleted] »

sparkie wrote: post #153
beerlord wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scary stuff. That's the real reason to use and encourage Crypto: to avoid political censorhip and control. Its a shame it was co-opted by mining and speculation.

Had bitcoin not been sold as a way to get rich, it's likely that most people would have still never heard of it. It's unfortunate that most people misunderstand what Bitcoin is because they can only think of it in terms of legacy financial instruments (ie, treat it like a stock). However, there's no doubt that many people who are in it for the technology and liberty got to know about it because someone else made mone…

[deleted]

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#163

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

VMG wrote: post #107
tlogan wrote: post #104

As far as I know, The Hacker News is just bunch of copied articles (i.e., blog spam) - but copying and plagiarism is so prevalent and pervasive on these news sites. Nothing new here. However, they did add "donate" pay button on their website which means that PayPal might be on the hook if somebody donates to The Hacker News but article is written by somebody else. Just speculating.

Even assuming you are 100% correct, it is interesting that this violation is not decided by the legal system but by a secret court inside PayPal. They will not even tell you the offense you are guilty of.

Secret court? They're a private company, they're entirely free to choose who they do business with for whatever reason (barring a few protected classes that would fall foul of anti-discrimination law, of course).

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#164

Post by hikergirl1234 »

endless1234 wrote: post #124
arisAlexis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are kind of asking for it... :) Bitcoin

...how do you get bitcoin without some kind of a third party?

Sell a good/service and receive payment in Bitcoin

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#165

Post by staplers »

beerlord wrote: post #65
barry-cotter wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well everyone who wants to accept payments on the internet ultimately relies on VisaMasterCard. They will shut you off and get other payment processors to shut you off like happened to SubscribeStar when they set up as a Patreon competitor. https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1076886857445711872?s... Long twitter thread on the relation between MasterCard, Visa and Patreon and how the credit card cartel is attempti…

Scary stuff. That's the real reason to use and encourage Crypto: to avoid political censorhip and control. Its a shame it was co-opted by mining and speculation.

  co-opted by mining
Mining is a fundamental requirement for crypto..

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#166

Post by jorams »

gcb0 wrote: post #118
jorams wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paypal is practically the only commonly accepted online payment method that doesn't require me to have a credit card. The reason people use Paypal today is that they offer a service without much competition to people who want to pay , so if you want to get paid you're leaving money on the table if you don't accept Paypal. This does of course depend on where your customer base is. Credit cards are universal in the US,…

people only use paypal because vendors accept paypal. you wouldn't have a paypal account otherwise. and outside of the usa, most bank systems have ways to forward money based on other records. I've implemented a few in south American countries where by accepting CC from one operator you also get an optional printable invoice (boleto) that can be paid on the bank (online or not) and it transfer same day to your accoun…

> people only use paypal because vendors accept paypal.

> you wouldn't have a paypal account otherwise.

Sure, if I couldn't use it to pay for anything, I wouldn't have a Paypal account. I don't use Paypal to send money to friends or anything like that, just for (international) online payments.

> and outside of the usa, most bank systems have ways to forward money based on other records.

Sure, but those aren't generally accepted online, internationally.

For example, the vast majority of online payments in the Netherlands are done through iDEAL, but that only works for Dutch banks. Some (generally large) stores support it, but most don't.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#168

Post by Tehnix »

Tehnix wrote: post #148
mrep wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oligopoly. Discover card and American Express are both mostly accepted (I say mostly because some companies don't accept American Express due to their charge back policies). And yes, it makes it so much better. True monopolies can slack so hard and yet still rake in boatloads of cash because their customers have no other option. Google cannot sit around on their search engine or other companies will steal all their c…

> Oligopoly. Discover card and American Express are both mostly accepted Duopoly when you are in Europe. Discover card and American Express is not really a thing here.

I'm not entirely sure what your question is? If it matters that Discover and Amex is not being accepted?

Most adults will be using credit cards, unless you haven't proven to your bank yet that you are trustworhty (i.e. just moved to the country). Debit is usually younger people, below 18 (at least in DK). Both are still Visa or MasterCard.

It would still be a problem, if as a merchant got banned by Visa/MasterCard, since now they have no other way than to accept cash, which obviously doesn't work if you are an online shop.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#169

Post by concerned_user »

timthorn wrote: post #135
simonh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK we mostly use debit cards these days, although the term ‘credit card’ seems to generally include debit cards. I haven’t had a credit card for almost a decade. Everytime an online store says credit cards only, it’s taken my debit card.

> we mostly use debit cards these days Which seems odd to me. Credit cards offer the advantages of points/cashback and more importantly the Consumer Credit Act, such that the card issuer is jointly liable for the goods. I only use my debit card to withdraw cash as the protections and incentives with my credit cards are much better.

You are correct but from my experience when I was visiting UK in 2008 you get charged with extra fee it was ~2% if you want to use the credit card or it was no extra fee if debit, so I was advised not to use credit card. Now I don't know if it was only specific places like aldi/tesco since I've only been there few weeks, and only to those places. Also cashbacks are not a thing even in 2018 in eastern europe at least, you can get miles, loyalty points, but not cashback.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#170

Post by sparkie »

aiven wrote: post #103
benmarks wrote: post #71

Wow, the "bitcoin" responses to that thread. Talk about trading one problem for another....

Yeah, everyone suggest to move from platform with 0.001% incidents rate, to the scammy bitcoin where no one is responsible for anything.

> where no one is responsible for anything.

Where everybody is responsible for themselves*

I'm sorry for you that you still need a babysitting government to protect you from those horrible scammers.

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