41–50 of 54 posts
As much as I respect the founders/alumni that came from PayPal, do any of them still use it? Forced to use PayPal since 2004 as a small business owner, it was impossible to reach their customer support. They've also left me to fight with insurers when it came to fraudulent transactions. Glad to hear they built a talented team, but as a customer...
2. Eat other food as well OR do not limit ourselves to our own dogfood : This can help greatly in shaping our products better and in providing seamless experience migrating customers from competitors to our product.
As much as I respect the founders/alumni that came from PayPal, do any of them still use it? Forced to use PayPal since 2004 as a small business owner, it was impossible to reach their customer support. They've also left me to fight with insurers when it came to fraudulent transactions. Glad to hear they built a talented team, but as a customer...
Speaking as a payments industry insider, it's surprising to me, but PayPal payments represent a huge proportion of online payments, and they're on an uptick. I'm not sure why. I mostly use PayPal when there's some kind of promotion that gives me an incentive, such as extra credit card rewards, or a cash back offer. I think a lot of people find it convenient to use PayPal for ecommerce because they don't have to get t…
One thing PayPal does well is have all the features you 100% depend on, already running well. The UX is kind of terrible, but it's at least all there. As a PayPal purchaser, I can enforce a specific shipping address, or a specific source payment method, change it constantly at will, and the seller mostly can't mess it up (PayPal enforces it on my behalf). I can sign up for a subscription, cancel it, all from PayPal's side, and the seller literally can't control that experience or block me from doing that (PayPal enforces that on my behalf too). I can even dispute a transaction with one click (although I've never needed to, so I don't know what happens after that).
I also have a Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover, and Simple, and Venmo. Some of these other credit card merchants or cash services have parts of these pieces half implemented. (There are 'fake/disposable' cc numbers and such that try to replicate the 'cancel anytime' thing. You can definitely call a credit card company to block future transactions from a specific company). But to my knowledge, no one else actually has the whole minimum-featureset-for-purchasing figured out and accessible with just clicks online. PayPal does. And they've had it, consistently, for almost a decade.
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So, as a person who writes eCommerce stuff all the time, I get why folks in the industry is sick of it. (It's duplicate steps, we always have to do "real credit cards" merchant, and also a separate "PayPal" integration)
But as a purchaser, I always prefer the PayPal option, rather than handing over a Credit Card to their Stripe/Square/whatever merchant service -- especially for anything with recurring billing. I get why other folks prefer it as well.
As much as I respect the founders/alumni that came from PayPal, do any of them still use it? Forced to use PayPal since 2004 as a small business owner, it was impossible to reach their customer support. They've also left me to fight with insurers when it came to fraudulent transactions. Glad to hear they built a talented team, but as a customer...
I also sell on eBay: they direct deposit into my bank. I have no idea what happens with international orders.
PayPal's Technical FAQ from Oct '99 (cobbled in response to a Slashdot post haha) demonstrates how ahead of the game they were: use of ECC (with tech advice from Stanford's Dan Boneh & Martin Hellman), privacy policy that prohibited sale of user data to 3rd party advertisers, generating cash via "the float" in a Merrill Lynch Money Market Fund, etc. https://web.archive.org/web/19991012084438/http://paypal.com... But…
PayPal's Technical FAQ from Oct '99 (cobbled in response to a Slashdot post haha) demonstrates how ahead of the game they were: use of ECC (with tech advice from Stanford's Dan Boneh & Martin Hellman), privacy policy that prohibited sale of user data to 3rd party advertisers, generating cash via "the float" in a Merrill Lynch Money Market Fund, etc. https://web.archive.org/web/19991012084438/http://paypal.com... But…
Now in the age of bitcoin this could have a very different answer. In any case, the FAQ is very interesting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Rather than driving around the country to comic book conventions, he was able to do more in one month in online auctions than the past decades he had been collecting. I personally try not to collect things, but for those who do, I wonder if this ruined the hobby because of instant gratification.
I do collect books. No, it didn't ruin the hobby and most collectors would agree. eBay allow me to search for books without having to travel to different countries, or whatever. I can buy books what it wouldn't be possible without eBay. For people who doesn't collect, may look like that, because they may think that going into eBay could ruin the fun, because everything is easy to get now. It isn't. You need to learn…
As much as I respect the founders/alumni that came from PayPal, do any of them still use it? Forced to use PayPal since 2004 as a small business owner, it was impossible to reach their customer support. They've also left me to fight with insurers when it came to fraudulent transactions. Glad to hear they built a talented team, but as a customer...
Speaking as a payments industry insider, it's surprising to me, but PayPal payments represent a huge proportion of online payments, and they're on an uptick. I'm not sure why. I mostly use PayPal when there's some kind of promotion that gives me an incentive, such as extra credit card rewards, or a cash back offer. I think a lot of people find it convenient to use PayPal for ecommerce because they don't have to get t…
I do look around once in a while, for what the alternatives are, but so far PayPal is the only service that lets me run my business from a passive web page. I don't even have my own URL. Every other service seems to have a tutorial showing me what code to install on my server, but frankly hosting and maintaining a server (at home or in the cloud) seems like it would add a dimension of complexity to my business that I don't want to deal with. I certainly don't want to be responsible for handling and storing my customers' credit card numbers and similar data.
I also think that the customer protections are beneficial, since they give people the confidence to buy from a relatively unknown seller.
On top of that, they have a deal with the USPS that lets me generate a first class shipping label, which isn't even available at the USPS website. What I save on postage more than covers the PayPal fee.
Sounds like a great place to work. I wonder about the "young people with extraordinary ability" however. Surely they would have also succeeded with "older people with extraordinary ability"? (ok they probably would cost them more..)
The opportunity is the paydirt. The experienced oldsters make up the sluice. The youngsters represent the water. Nobody worries much about the spillage if there's gold in the pan.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking as a payments industry insider, it's surprising to me, but PayPal payments represent a huge proportion of online payments, and they're on an uptick. I'm not sure why. I mostly use PayPal when there's some kind of promotion that gives me an incentive, such as extra credit card rewards, or a cash back offer. I think a lot of people find it convenient to use PayPal for ecommerce because they don't have to get t…
> (PayPal is) on an uptick. I'm not sure why. One thing PayPal does well is have all the features you 100% depend on, already running well. The UX is kind of terrible, but it's at least all there. As a PayPal purchaser, I can enforce a specific shipping address, or a specific source payment method, change it constantly at will, and the seller mostly can't mess it up (PayPal enforces it on my behalf). I can sign up fo…