We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business • Hacker News Board

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#291

Post by chii » Thu, May 09, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #94

mavdi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is traditionally anti crypto, but just want to point out that literally no one in this world can stop you accepting Bitcoin payments. That's the true power of decentralization.

Sure they can. Accepting Bitcoin for payments is illegal where I live. It is enforced by fines and jail time, just like all other laws.

How do they actually enforce it?

Presumably, displaying a bitcoin address isn't illegal, and you are not in control of who sends you coins.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#292

Post by eythian » Thu, May 09, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

thedaemon wrote: post #248

LeonM wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that I was trying to say is: don't assume that people have credit cards. In many countries credit cards are uncommon.

Credit / Debit cards are the same thing online. We, as is USA people, use the terms interchangeable often. I'm going to guess that most EU people have some form of banking card. So we will continue to assume that people have a form of payment other than cash.

This is not true. They are not always the same thing and assuming so is a bad idea.

My debit card can't be used online except via iDeal, and only sites in this country (largely) support iDeal. I can, however, use it via paypal.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#293

Post by WhiteOwlLion » Thu, May 09, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

Does PayPal still require you to arbitrate in California? This is why auto-sweep is so useful. At most, they can only have 3 business days of your money.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#294

Post by yitchelle » Thu, May 09, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #287

metaprotocol wrote: post #78

Niteo produce a product to produce content farms and generate spam. PayPal has done the world a favour by banning them.

PayPal should avoid doing vigilantism if they want to keep people's money under trust. It matters very little how despicable the company is, monetary services must not hold opinions unless explicitly told one by a local government.

The Swiss bank model.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#295

Post by jedberg » Thu, May 09, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

PayPal spends a lot of money on lawyers to make sure that no state or country considers them a bank. The reason is so they can avoid banking regulations.

If they were subject to regulations, they wouldn’t be able to freeze your account without warning, nor hold your money for 180 days.

As they say internally: “we don’t make money by letting people have it back”.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#296

Post by elbrian » Thu, May 09, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #264

paypal has no business in regulating what software their customers are allowed or not allowed to sell. Even if it's spam creation software. If it's not illegal to sell, it should not be blocked by paypal. If the software is spam and is bad for society, let society introduce a law to ban the software, the same way you can't sell drugs using paypal. This moral policing by businesses is bad for society - and lets busine…

> paypal has no business in regulating what software their customers are allowed or not allowed to sell.

PayPal is a private company. They do have business in regulating what types of customers they'd like to serve, and they are well-within their rights to create and enforce their own terms of use.

Certain types of customers (scammers, spammers, etc) are a greater liability and can end up causing more issues (and less revenue) than they are worth, so it makes perfect sense for PayPal to choose not to do business with them.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#297

Post by codezero » Thu, May 09, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #260

gotland_ wrote: post #71

Don't know if it is the reason for the ban, but Niteos main product seems to be a service for creating spam networks. https://www.easyblognetworks.com , https://niteo.co/projects

That raises another question: why couldn't Paypal simply say this? I can imagine several plausible reasons, related to potential liability, but does that mean that if we're trying to outsource business functions to specialist firms that we can't expect them to be transparent in their operations?

Having worked in a different industry that also had to ban people I can make an assumption: they don’t need to, and doing so never makes anyone happy, so why bother. If they said it was because of their spam business, the owner would do exactly what they did on HN: “but we didn’t use PayPal for our spam business” - this won’t change the decision.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#298

Post by marcosdumay » Thu, May 09, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

mavdi wrote: post #20

brakmic wrote: post #10

This and similar behavior is what ultimately drives people toward decentralized solutions, like Bitcoin for example.

HN is traditionally anti crypto, but just want to point out that literally no one in this world can stop you accepting Bitcoin payments. That's the true power of decentralization.

> HN is traditionally anti crypto

Yeah, I'm probably one of the people that you are describing.

Crypto-money does not work. I would love if it worked, I also would love if somebody learned how to reverse entropy growth or got time travel working in some way. Yet, none of those work. (And yes, crypto-money isn't on the same level of those two, maybe some day somebody will manage to make it work, if so, great!)

Be sure that your label of "anti crypto" is much more a tag over you than the large HN crowd.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#299

Post by chmod775 » Thu, May 09, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #220

chmod775 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read the same article? Because the on I read said: > After calling their support twice, explaining the situation and asking for a reason, we have received nothing but “the decision is final, and we will not provide more information”.

But the post never explained what the situation was... just that they "explained 'it'" to Paypal.. They also don't explain what they are accepting payments for, other than " receiving some minor payments and paying for a few online services " I suspect there is far more to this story.

They have no idea why they've been terminated and PayPal won't tell them. From the article:

> We never thought this would happen and have absolutely no clue what they’re referring [to]. We have reviewed the user agreement multiple times and there is absolutely nothing there that we’ve engaged in.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#300

Post by lighthazard » Thu, May 09, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #4

I've been preaching this since forever. Don't rely on PayPal. They're less professional than a kid selling juice next to the road. There are no grace periods with PayPal to give you time to move to another service. There is never more than a generic reason and stonewalling when they terminate you. And yes, their decision is always final. They'll happily terminate your only source of income on a friday afternoon, free…

  freeze your funds

This is the biggest reason I don't suggest Paypal to anyone. The fact that you can lose $5k+ because of someone on their end with no fraud issues and legitimate sales (which they can easily verify) is theft.