I don't think this guy realizes the extent of how correct he is. PayPal is not a bank. They are basically a giant merchant account. Wells Fargo backs them, even while they compete with them (clearXchange.com). So PayPal doesn't have to operate by the same rules. When you use PayPal, you are putting money into PayPal's bank account and hoping they act in your best interests. A reasonable person (I feel) would conclude…
That is not true in the UK, where the OP is operating in. Paypal is a bank here and subject to regulations.
Good riddance, PayPal
181–190 of 272 posts
Re: Good riddance, PayPal
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because merchant banks require them. Anyone can create any number of C corporations at any time. Merchant accounts are one of several business services that young companies can't set typically set up without somehow binding the contract to the business owners themselves.
Merchant accounts are one of several business services that young companies can't set typically set up without somehow binding the contract to the business owners themselves. I've noticed a disturbing trend in this respect recently, with seemingly everyone from law firms to banks wanting personal guarantees from someone to back up the company. This practice should, IMHO, be prohibited by law, and this should be impos…
Re: Good riddance, PayPal
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
From a merchant's viewpoint, once you receive coins, NO ONE can take them away from you, which actually solves the exact problem the guy have.
From a customer's, it means you have precisely zero assurance once you've paid that the other guy will follow through. It's just like sending cash through the mail, except with no chance it won't get there.
Therefore I assert that the Bitcoin model is superior: solving the fraud risk for merchants is more important than for customers. If a merchant start delivering poorly (or not at all) with purchases, he will quickly receive poor reviews and go out of business, hence self-correcting the fraud problem.
Of course another option with Bitcoin which you are not thinking about is to use escrow services as third party between buyers and sellers.
Re: Good riddance, PayPal
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>Is there a reason Amazon Payments or Google Wallet haven't overtaken PayPal in this market? As a buyer (and not a merchant), I love Paypal because I can have it debit directly from by bank account instead of handing over my credit card information. I hate credit cards, and this combined with Paypal's two-factor authentication gives me some good peace of mind. I haven't seen any other services that provide direct-deb…
You'd rather give the internet a direct line to your bank account to suck out all your money, vs giving it a number to a credit line (which you can refuse to pay if there's any fraud)? I'd like to see the logic behind this.
Re: Good riddance, PayPal
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 (a…
That's amazing. Also goes to show anyone who tries to talk about "Europe" is making a useless generalization - here in Sweden I easily got two credit cards when I was a student with no income aside from government student loans.
But don't you have VISA/Mastercard debit cards? In Sweden, there are no longer any ATM cards, everyone gets a VISA or MasterCard instead that works in ATM, stores and online.
Re: Good riddance, PayPal
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luckily, Paypal is an anti-fraud AI company which also happens to run credit cards sometimes The thing is, it shouldn't take much in the way of "AI" to recognize that a company that has already been doing business for several months or even years is probably not going to wake up one morning and start defrauding people. Criminals are lazy, and running a business is a lot of work. It would take about 30 seconds' worth…
You're wrong. A common type of fraud on ebay is for an account to build up a reputation buying/selling low cost items (or high cost items between a group of criminal partners) before using the account to scam on high price items. Criminals are perfectly willing to put time and effort to create fake accounts or just buy stolen accounts.
On eBay, yes, it was pretty easy to play the "Sell a bunch of stuff for 99 cents and then pull the big scam" game. But none of the widely-publicized cases where PayPal has basically attempted to wreck the lives of startup founders fall into that pattern. These people have all had independent web sites selling actual products, and/or a background in other ventures that could be checked if PayPal were to spend 5 minutes doing due diligence on them.
Re: Good riddance, PayPal
#187Square would solve the problem for many, but... would the average person carry around a hardware device so their friends can give them money by cell phone? Probably not.
Re: Good riddance, PayPal
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Merchant accounts are one of several business services that young companies can't set typically set up without somehow binding the contract to the business owners themselves. I've noticed a disturbing trend in this respect recently, with seemingly everyone from law firms to banks wanting personal guarantees from someone to back up the company. This practice should, IMHO, be prohibited by law, and this should be impos…
Banks already do ask for financials and corporate track record. You're required to stake your own credit when your financials are inadequate. You want that to be illegal? It's better than those companies not be able to obtain merchant accounts?
Insisting on personal liability for a corporate account is equivalent to denying the account to the corporation.
Bankers would prefer to have you sign away your first born children too (sounds like something out of Dickens). But we've made such practices illegal and there's no evidence that the money supply is suffering for it.
Re: Good riddance, PayPal
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Merchant accounts are one of several business services that young companies can't set typically set up without somehow binding the contract to the business owners themselves. I've noticed a disturbing trend in this respect recently, with seemingly everyone from law firms to banks wanting personal guarantees from someone to back up the company. This practice should, IMHO, be prohibited by law, and this should be impos…
Banks already do ask for financials and corporate track record. You're required to stake your own credit when your financials are inadequate. You want that to be illegal? It's better than those companies not be able to obtain merchant accounts?
As far as I can see, those providers who require personal guarantees usually do so as a standard condition for almost any new business. Effectively, they consider everyone's financials to be inadequate.
You want that to be illegal? It's better than those companies not be able to obtain merchant accounts?
Someone would still offer the merchant account services to businesses who could demonstrate a reasonable business plan, because on balance they would make money from doing so. Most new businesses are not, in fact, going to experience a 30% chargeback rate four months after the original sale.
The banks obviously know that, they just want (as usual) to privatise the profits but externalise the risks/losses. I have no problem with prohibiting that kind of predatory behaviour. It's a potentially significant barrier to starting a new business, and with the global economy in its current state, allowing absurdly risk-averse banks to inhibit new businesses is exactly what we shouldn't be doing.
If the banking industry had a track record of assessing its clients responsibly and lending (or not lending) based on the results of those assessments and reasonable assumptions, I would be happy to cut them some slack. But we all know damn well that they aren't doing that. And if governments are going to pressure them just to lend to small businesses, they should certainly pressure them to provide basic services to businesses that are viable without relying on loans as well.
Re: Good riddance, PayPal
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt it. Money launderers never do chargebacks and never make complaints. They are _the_ ideal banking customer, which is why the tax man hates on them.
Money launderers launder money from stolen credit cards. Chargebacks are filed a month or two later by owners of these stolen credit cards.