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A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

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Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#11

Post by fweimer »

mtmail wrote: post #3

German, well West European, banks are slow in creating a competitor to Paypal, called Wero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) I'm not implying they block Paypal because of that. It's good to have more competition and I wished my bank would take part.

The existing giro system is the real Paypal competitor. Most Europeans had access to Paypal-style money transfers before they had email. Merchants probably want to rely on another party to maintain their integration, but there is no real need for another centralized service similar to Paypal.

(The U.S. really is an outlier among developed nations in that its giro system is not widely used, and many residents would not even know how to access it. Hence Paypal's network effect can offer value there. Europe is very different.)

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#12

Post by cultofmetatron »

ronsor wrote: post #2

PayPal security is amazing. It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too, but actual fraudsters and criminals are never deterred.

> It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too,

yup, my paypal got locked after using it for over 20 years. Customer service refused to help and wouldn't even tell me why it was locked. I still get messages from paypal that they "couldn't get process subscription for X." won't delete my data either.

Scummy behavior from them on multiple levels.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#13

Post by euroderf »

mtmail wrote: post #3

German, well West European, banks are slow in creating a competitor to Paypal, called Wero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) I'm not implying they block Paypal because of that. It's good to have more competition and I wished my bank would take part.

Finland has MobilePay, it links bank accounts to phone numbers, very easy to use.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#14

Post by Terr_ »

In this case I think it's justified [0] to offer an alternate reporting: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj6y42jggdyo

> European banks have seen widespread unauthorised direct debits from PayPal accounts, the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV) says.

> The German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) says payments worth in the region of 10 billion euros (£8.6bn) have had to be blocked, after PayPal's fraud-checking system failed.

[0] I was impeded by cookie popups and adblock/privacy-mode blockers in another language, and neither are direct reports or superior details.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#15

Post by tchalla »

mtmail wrote: post #3

German, well West European, banks are slow in creating a competitor to Paypal, called Wero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) I'm not implying they block Paypal because of that. It's good to have more competition and I wished my bank would take part.

German banks (and in general businesses) are amazing. They won't do anything until legally required to do so and even then will drag their feet. There has been instant bank transfers (transfers in 10 seconds) available for a while - launched in November 2017. German banks kept charging 1.5€ for this instant transfer or some didn't have them available at all. They didn't build any of these systems and yet this was their stand.

On January 9 2025, EU made it compulsory to have receipt of transfers instant and in October 2025 - sending too should be available at the same cost as the normal transfer. There's nothing stopping from implementing bot send/receive instant transfers in January 2025. Yet, some of these banks only enabled instant receipts in January and will make the sending available exactly on 8th October 2025, 1 day before the deadline. What a business mindset to have!

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#16

Post by n1b0m »

hirako2000 wrote: post #6

What's so specific to German banks ?

PayPal is the most important online payment service in the German market, with nearly 30% of online purchases made using the platform.

The sheer volume of PayPal and direct debit transactions in Germany magnified the impact of the outage compared to other markets.

With millions of potentially fraudulent debit requests appearing simultaneously, German banks chose to freeze all incoming PayPal direct debit payments. This was a necessary step to protect their customers from what appeared to be a massive, systemic fraud event.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#18

Post by miduil »

mtmail wrote: post #3

German, well West European, banks are slow in creating a competitor to Paypal, called Wero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment) I'm not implying they block Paypal because of that. It's good to have more competition and I wished my bank would take part.

There is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_euro in the making. I think that would then also supersede Wero?

Portugal got mbway, Austria used to have paybox, there is iDEAL, sofort.com and generally besides the local country systems with de-facto European banks you get "SEPA Instant Credit Transfer" nowadays - however IBAN is "harder" to share than lets say the phone number your friends already got.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#19

Post by thevillagechief »

calmbonsai wrote: post #7
ronsor wrote: post #2

PayPal security is amazing. It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too, but actual fraudsters and criminals are never deterred.

Yup. My advice for using PayPal is do not unless you have no other choice. I just got my monthly account statement and, as usual, thankfully zero activity. Though extremely innovative (for its time), it's been a slipshod org since inception and slipshod is a property you decidedly do not want in a payments processor.

My only use case for paypal is booking an internal flight in a country I visit annually because they do not accept my credit card, but will accept paypal. Literally the only reason I reluctantly got an account. The horror stories I've heard, I wouldn't put any serious money in there. And their drama during the heydays of censorship a few years ago, literally fining people $2500 for politically incorrect speech at the time, I couldn't believe sane people at the company thought that was an acceptable idea. I'd really like to know the inside story of that decision. We forget how crazy 2021-2022 was.

Re: A failure of security systems at PayPal is causing concern for German banks

#20

Post by Cthulhu_ »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #12
ronsor wrote: post #2

PayPal security is amazing. It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too, but actual fraudsters and criminals are never deterred.

> It randomly locks people out of their accounts and randomly closes their accounts too, yup, my paypal got locked after using it for over 20 years. Customer service refused to help and wouldn't even tell me why it was locked. I still get messages from paypal that they "couldn't get process subscription for X." won't delete my data either. Scummy behavior from them on multiple levels.

Thank you for the reminder to move money out of Paypal, I get some money every month through Patreon to pay for server costs but keep forgetting about it.
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