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PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

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Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#191

Post by theptip »

imnotjames wrote: post #123
_Microft wrote: post #7

Per [0], a possible answer to this seems to be that an arms dealer had connections to a company called Tardigrade Ltd. and all transactions with firms like these are prohibited which is why the word "Tardigrade" made it into PayPal's filter. As long as companies like PayPal have issues like that, or with moderation in case of Youtube, Twitter or Facebook, I'd claim neither of these companies have actually solved scal…

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

Just to be clear, OFAC does not give a list of “banned strings”. It provides a list if individuals and entities that it is illegal to transact with. By which I mean, it’s the entity that matters, not just the raw string.

It’s up to the payment processor to have a process that ensures they don’t send payments to a blocked entity.

You can search for them here: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/office-of-foreign-as... and see the listing for the company in this notice: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...

Note that the standard practice for handling an OFAC hit (e.g. payment to O Bin Laden) is to disambiguate your payee from the blocked individual/entity. This can be easy or difficult depending on how much info you have on the payee; if you have an address and nationality already that don’t match the sanctioned entity then you’re generally ok; typically you would collect a photo of the payee’s ID and run a manual check if there was any doubt.

These “enhanced due diligence” processes can be quite time consuming in aggregate, and I’m not surprised that PayPal isn’t running a detailed EDD process on transactions that will probably net it a few cents of fees.

Having said that, given the structure of their business (online checkout) I’m surprised that they are considering the product (eg “tardigrade”) as being relevant; they have account info on both the payor and payee so they know the payment isn’t going to the sanctioned Cypress company from the OFAC list. This isn’t a Venmo payment that says “pass this payment on to Tardigrade Inc”, which you would want to block.

This seems like either a bug in their screening code or some very risk-averse logic (maybe to do with low-value transactions).

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#192

Post by filleduchaos »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #186
the_pwner224 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelle is also a third party, just well integrated into the banks' UIs. I had a Zelle payment blocked recently and ended up seeing a lot of stuff on the internet / reddit about Zelle doing similar stuff as the other companies when it comes to blocking payments as well as customer service & having money disappear in some cases.

Zelle is the brand name for Early Warning Services, which used to be called clearXchange, and is owned by the biggest banks themselves. When I write there is no middleman or third party, I mean that the money goes from the sender's account to the recipient's account. With PayPal/Venmo/Apple Cash/etc, the money goes from the sender's account, to Paypal/Venmo/Apple/etc's account, and then to the recipient. Also, with Z…

> Also, with Zelle, you never need to give anyone your bank account number

As a non-American, seeing this listed as a plus is always so strange.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#193

Post by lotsofpulp »

filleduchaos wrote: post #192
lotsofpulp wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zelle is the brand name for Early Warning Services, which used to be called clearXchange, and is owned by the biggest banks themselves. When I write there is no middleman or third party, I mean that the money goes from the sender's account to the recipient's account. With PayPal/Venmo/Apple Cash/etc, the money goes from the sender's account, to Paypal/Venmo/Apple/etc's account, and then to the recipient. Also, with Z…

> Also, with Zelle, you never need to give anyone your bank account number As a non-American, seeing this listed as a plus is always so strange.

It’s beyond ridiculous. The safe thing to do in the US is to have accounts which you don’t give info to anyone. And then you setup ACH transfers from that account to a checking account you use for expenses, and only keep smaller amounts in the checking account enough for money going out in the near future.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#194

Post by derision »

URSpider94 wrote: post #155
imnotjames wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

The payments won’t still go through - if you look at the links, PayPal is returning a big red error message to customers. It doesn’t look like PayPal is doing any kind of review, they are just blocking all transactions with Tardigrade in the associated text anywhere.

How do you think a review process works? It's not instant. When you try to process the payment, the OFAC check fails, and it's flagged for manual review. Only option is to show the user an error

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#195

Post by ponker »

_Microft wrote: post #7

Per [0], a possible answer to this seems to be that an arms dealer had connections to a company called Tardigrade Ltd. and all transactions with firms like these are prohibited which is why the word "Tardigrade" made it into PayPal's filter. As long as companies like PayPal have issues like that, or with moderation in case of Youtube, Twitter or Facebook, I'd claim neither of these companies have actually solved scal…

I’m sure the PayPal CEO is deeply wounded by a HN commenter declaring that they haven’t “solved scale,” but perhaps he’s comforted by the tens of billions of dollars they make each year.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#196

Post by ponker »

derision wrote: post #194
URSpider94 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The payments won’t still go through - if you look at the links, PayPal is returning a big red error message to customers. It doesn’t look like PayPal is doing any kind of review, they are just blocking all transactions with Tardigrade in the associated text anywhere.

How do you think a review process works? It's not instant. When you try to process the payment, the OFAC check fails, and it's flagged for manual review. Only option is to show the user an error

What is “manual review” here? The reviewer doesn’t have the ability to send the transaction through. It went to the circular file.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#197

Post by b112 »

b112 wrote: post #120
_heimdall wrote: post #82

I had a horrible experience with PayPal earlier this year. I needed to send $500 to an individual buying our house, they were paying cash and on such a tight timeline for closing that the closing docs were written up before they got back their inspection report and asked for an allowance. Paypal kept blocking the transaction even though it was just a simple person to person transfer. I was on chat with their support…

NO security team?! So they literally admitted that they don't have anyone actively monitoring transactions? Working to watch for fraud? Theft? Hacking? Wow, I may stop using them as well.

All I can say, to all the comments, is "whoosh".

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#198

Post by tresCommatoso »

ponker wrote: post #196
derision wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think a review process works? It's not instant. When you try to process the payment, the OFAC check fails, and it's flagged for manual review. Only option is to show the user an error

What is “manual review” here? The reviewer doesn’t have the ability to send the transaction through. It went to the circular file.

To get away as a bad apple is to make a valid buisness with a auto-flagged name, get reviewed and de-flagged as a mistake - then use the "reviewed" account for money laundering, weapons or drug trade.

Most systems will not re-check again on a false-positive that already consumed money. There is a whole buisness out there, making real-fake-door companys for just this.

Surprisingly, using a very common name or a already dubious name does not work as well. The trick here, is to follow expected algo optimizations to reduce money spend on reading through transaction history of a flagged case.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#199

Post by hennedo »

URSpider94 wrote: post #155
imnotjames wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

The payments won’t still go through - if you look at the links, PayPal is returning a big red error message to customers. It doesn’t look like PayPal is doing any kind of review, they are just blocking all transactions with Tardigrade in the associated text anywhere.

Tried this with my german paypal account. Several 1cent payments were flagged, reviewed and then accepted. One 2€ payment was reviewed, flagged and hold back until I describe the details of this transaction.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#200

Post by YetAnotherNick »

tuiq03 wrote: post #97
blunte wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my experiences helping a client with Paypal, even though we had written approval from one of their executives in Paypal risk management, we got shut down weeks later for violating the thing we explicitly got permission for. If I were you, I would expect something to trigger a blockage again (and ultimately decide, like many companies, that Paypal just isn't reliable).

that’s proven by all other problems we have working with. but you cannot simply turn it off since it has huge payment share vs other payment methods

Just curious, why is allowing cuba in the description so important to you?
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