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Good riddance, PayPal

elliotjaystocks.com

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Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#31

Post by mtrimpe »

Irfaan wrote: post #6
pytrin wrote: post #2

Paypal to me is the classical example of the incumbent growing stale and detached from its consumer base on which it built its business on. Sellers like Eliot are the bulk of Paypal's business - small businesses who needed a (relatively) easy way to start accepting payments online. Paypal is just giving every opportunity for someone else to come and get their market share. Hopefully it will happen sooner rather than…

If PayPal is so very terrible (and I believe it), Is there a reason Amazon Payments or Google Wallet haven't overtaken PayPal in this market? If neither Amazon nor Google's brand recognition hasn't convinced folks (buyers or sellers) to start pushing it instead of PayPal for Internet purchases, I can only hope it's because their solutions are equally terrible - otherwise, I have a hard time seeing how a new player wi…

As Auguste mentioned already, it's all about lacking direct debit for international customers.

I'm from the Netherlands and if you're a freelancer here you need to provide income statements for 3 years before you can get a credit card.

That meant that until last year I couldn't buy a thing with Google Wallet or Amazon Payments without asking my family for a credit card.

The only thing that worked for me was PayPal (and the iTunes store.)

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#32

Post by kintamanimatt »

tylerrooney wrote: post #27

Perhaps someone who runs their own company can answer this question for me: If you don't use PayPal, how do you receive payment from customers who don't have credit cards? Are your customers exclusively in North America? Or do you just write those customers off (which is a valid option if PayPal integration would be that painful)? Adding PayPal as a payment option has been an enormous pain for us but a non-consequent…

Moneybookers is a fairly decent alternative. I assume you're talking about mainland Europe where credit card penetration is less prevalent.

Moneybookers interface is terrible, and they will expose your customers to this horrible interface. Their customer service seems to be confused but I've never heard horror stories.

There are payment solutions geared towards European customers so that you can accept bank transfers, etc.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#33

Post by aristidb »

adrinavarro wrote: post #28
tylerrooney wrote: post #27

Perhaps someone who runs their own company can answer this question for me: If you don't use PayPal, how do you receive payment from customers who don't have credit cards? Are your customers exclusively in North America? Or do you just write those customers off (which is a valid option if PayPal integration would be that painful)? Adding PayPal as a payment option has been an enormous pain for us but a non-consequent…

There are debit cards out there! In fact, everyone I know has at least one debit card (either MasterCard or VISA), aside from the number of people who have an AMEX/VISA (credit type). And debit cards work everywhere. I've used my VISA Electron (debit) pretty much everywhere in the developed world, both online and travelling abroad.

No, not everyone has a MasterCard / VISA debit card.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#34

Post by k-mcgrady »

adrinavarro wrote: post #28
tylerrooney wrote: post #27

Perhaps someone who runs their own company can answer this question for me: If you don't use PayPal, how do you receive payment from customers who don't have credit cards? Are your customers exclusively in North America? Or do you just write those customers off (which is a valid option if PayPal integration would be that painful)? Adding PayPal as a payment option has been an enormous pain for us but a non-consequent…

There are debit cards out there! In fact, everyone I know has at least one debit card (either MasterCard or VISA), aside from the number of people who have an AMEX/VISA (credit type). And debit cards work everywhere. I've used my VISA Electron (debit) pretty much everywhere in the developed world, both online and travelling abroad.

The only problem with debit cards is that MasterCard and Visa don't cover everyone. For example MasterCard also runs Maestro [1] in the UK which lots of online payment systems seem to neglect (I had to setup another bank account with another bank to get my hands on a Visa Debit card for this very reason).

[1] http://www.maestrocard.com/uk/

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#35

Post by reitzensteinm »

The customer service angle sucks, no question, and I'm worried about getting into similar trouble (I sell downloadable games via PayPal).

But I actually think holding an issues worth of revenue in reserve is a decent enough compromise. If the company goes bankrupt before an issue ships, for whatever reason, PayPal themselves are going to be on the hook for refunding every single payment, as well as chargeback fees that may apply.

PayPal's fees are around 5% - what's their gross profit on each transaction, 1-2% at most?

So if there's a 2% chance of an issue going awry and angry people starting chargebacks, a magazine 50 issues old could turn into a net loss for PayPal overnight, which is why even merchants with long and clean track records get stung by this.

PayPal's freeze on that money means their end is covered, and you can still bring the sales to a bank and get a line of credit to cover the printing costs.

The way PayPal handles the customer service end rightfully earns their horrible reputation. But too many people act like the risk itself is not there, or that there's a clear, obvious line between fraudulent businesses that con artists start and solid trustworthy businesses that we start. If PayPal wasn't as aggressive with their fraud prevention, they'd be skinned alive.

And, as other people are pointing out in this thread, standard merchant accounts are not immune from the same level of shoot first, ask questions later fraud prevention.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#37

Post by philhippus »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #32
tylerrooney wrote: post #27

Perhaps someone who runs their own company can answer this question for me: If you don't use PayPal, how do you receive payment from customers who don't have credit cards? Are your customers exclusively in North America? Or do you just write those customers off (which is a valid option if PayPal integration would be that painful)? Adding PayPal as a payment option has been an enormous pain for us but a non-consequent…

Moneybookers is a fairly decent alternative. I assume you're talking about mainland Europe where credit card penetration is less prevalent. Moneybookers interface is terrible, and they will expose your customers to this horrible interface. Their customer service seems to be confused but I've never heard horror stories. There are payment solutions geared towards European customers so that you can accept bank transfers…

*Moneybookers has been rebranded, now called Skrill.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#38

Post by danielbarla »

patio11 wrote: post #19
andr wrote: post #10

Does anyone have insider knowledge of why PayPal has been causing merchants so much trouble? It sure looks bad on the outside, but I'd be interested to hear their rationale.

To the extent this perception represents actual reality: You know how every time a new payment provider comes up and people kvelch that it isn't available in their country and how no provider is? This is because every payment provider which attempts to hit as many countries as Paypal does dies . They're killed by fraud. (Fraud kills domestic ones, too, all the time, but it's marginally less frequent.) Luckily, Paypal…

Having a large base of clients willing to buy through their services is ultimately what matters, and I think they achieved that partially by siding with the customer most of the time. Making a purchase through their services, you know that you more or less protected, and if you start jumping up and down, you will probably get your money back. Businesses put up with their less-than-fair treatment because until recently, there weren't any alternatives on nearly the same level of "respectability", as far as buyers are concerned.

I'm willing to bet that in the beginning, when they were mainly trying to court businesses to implement their service, the situation was different.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#39

Post by kintamanimatt »

philhippus wrote: post #37
kintamanimatt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moneybookers is a fairly decent alternative. I assume you're talking about mainland Europe where credit card penetration is less prevalent. Moneybookers interface is terrible, and they will expose your customers to this horrible interface. Their customer service seems to be confused but I've never heard horror stories. There are payment solutions geared towards European customers so that you can accept bank transfers…

*Moneybookers has been rebranded, now called Skrill.

So they have! I knew they were transitioning, but it appears they're just about done with the change.

Skrill is such an awful name IMHO!

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#40

Post by brazzy »

adrinavarro wrote: post #28
tylerrooney wrote: post #27

Perhaps someone who runs their own company can answer this question for me: If you don't use PayPal, how do you receive payment from customers who don't have credit cards? Are your customers exclusively in North America? Or do you just write those customers off (which is a valid option if PayPal integration would be that painful)? Adding PayPal as a payment option has been an enormous pain for us but a non-consequent…

There are debit cards out there! In fact, everyone I know has at least one debit card (either MasterCard or VISA), aside from the number of people who have an AMEX/VISA (credit type). And debit cards work everywhere. I've used my VISA Electron (debit) pretty much everywhere in the developed world, both online and travelling abroad.

"everyone I know" is not a useful sample to approximate the customers of an online business with international customers.

Where payment options are concerned, VISA/Mastercard branded debit cards are the exact same thing as credit cards. And in many countries, the average citizen has neither. They may have a debit card that's part of some national payment network, they may be used to buying stuff online via their mobile phone account, or in cash at their corner convenience store, or via wire transfer from their bank account.

Paypal allows payment via a MANY such schemes you have never heard about. That is their USP, and something no startup can easily "disrupt".

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