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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

#61

Post by gambiting »

euroderf wrote: post #13
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.

Poland has Blik, it's amazing and I wish it existed everywhere - you can pay someone using a phone number or you can generate a Blik number that you can give anyone else to request or send a payment - and it's instant. Most stores accept Blik payments, and I've paid using it in places where bank cards are not accepted or where there is no infrastructure to accept them - just use Blik.

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

#62

Post by bgnn »

nicce wrote: post #58
mrweasel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They never really had much of a reason to create a competitor. There where already plenty of alternatives once online shopping/payments became a thing. Here you could do "cash on delivery", credit/debit card, account transfers (yes even across banks, it not as big an issue as US banks makes it) or you could send stamps (not a popular options). There was never a need for PayPal or PayPal style services. These days it'…

> There where already plenty of alternatives once online shopping/payments became a thing. Let’s say direct bank transfers are not counted. What alternatives are not based on Visa/Mastercard on global scale?

Global scale is different indeed.

EU scale there are tons of solutions: iDeal (expanding to EU from NL), Klarna, sofort..

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

#63

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

amluto wrote: post #54
calmbonsai wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with PayPal is they've always been that way. I've come close to deleting my account on 4 separate occasions. I've had one since shortly after their merger from the old X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank) . Per discussions on this thread, the singular reason people have tolerated their horrid service over the years they've been an effective monopoly in many locales.

Just delete it. I used to have an account, and my experience using “guest payments” (which are usually, but not always, supported) is generally more reliable than logging in and paying.

This requires a bank that will issue one time use card numbers. PayPal is less friction for the benefit of proxying your credentials.

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

bgnn wrote: post #62
nicce wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There where already plenty of alternatives once online shopping/payments became a thing. Let’s say direct bank transfers are not counted. What alternatives are not based on Visa/Mastercard on global scale?

Global scale is different indeed. EU scale there are tons of solutions: iDeal (expanding to EU from NL), Klarna, sofort..

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by dcow »

raincole wrote: post #59
hibikir wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never worked for PayPal, but I did for a competitor. Dealing with fraud is a red queen game: The fraudsters can keep trying until they find what gaps are there in your system, and will sometimes communicate with each other: Part of our defense system involved infiltrating some of those spaces and seeing the guides that were being sold to try to commit fraud in our platform. Meanwhile you will still have a false pos…

Yeah. I had always thought these AML/KYC stuff were just governments/people in power expanding their arms into normal people's lives. I still think they mostly are, but after learning how much fraud is happening, I'm not sure what a better solution would look like.

Strong digital credentialing—something the web has been surprisingly allergic to.

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

#66

Post by pbmonster »

fweimer wrote: post #11
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 no…

> The existing giro system is the real Paypal competitor. Most Europeans had access to Paypal-style money transfers before they had email.

Not at all, not even close! In most cases, that's wrong even today.

Want to sell something online? A book you wrote, a game you made? There's no way for people to pay you via giro and automatically receiving the good on the page where the payment process was initiated.

Giro is not instant, and almost no bank will offer an API that signals that a specific customer has transferred funds successfully. It always takes hours, and the confirmation process is almost always only semi-automatic for the seller.

Visa/MasterCard/PayPal/Twint/Tikkie/Wero have and will provide actual value. Giro was nice 15 years ago, but hasn't kept up.

And even for money transfers between two private individuals, giro is the inferior system - mainly because Euro banks fail at UX/UI. I don't know a single bank that offers an "address book" in their online banking app/website. If you want to send someone money, you better remember their IBAN yourself. And because the system comes with a degree of anonymity, you can't even send people money back! Their IBAN is not part of the metadata of an incoming transfer, the only way to send money back is to contact that person and have them send their IBAN.

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

#67

Post by tnolet »

throw7 wrote: post #60
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.

Venmos's security is also A++. I made an account, sent some money, then my account was immediately flagged and closed for fraud. Nice.

Off topic: Venmo does not exist (?) in Europe land. What’s its appeal compared to PayPal or regular credit cards or even debit?

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

#68

Post by mihaaly »

calmbonsai wrote: post #43
hibikir wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never worked for PayPal, but I did for a competitor. Dealing with fraud is a red queen game: The fraudsters can keep trying until they find what gaps are there in your system, and will sometimes communicate with each other: Part of our defense system involved infiltrating some of those spaces and seeing the guides that were being sold to try to commit fraud in our platform. Meanwhile you will still have a false pos…

My issue with PayPal is they've always been that way. I've come close to deleting my account on 4 separate occasions. I've had one since shortly after their merger from the old X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank) . Per discussions on this thread, the singular reason people have tolerated their horrid service over the years they've been an effective monopoly in many locales.

I did delete many years ago.

They blocked me claiming suspicious activity occurred in my account (just a low traffic personal account). Ignoring me wanting to know what suspicious activity was it and if it needed, or actually already was, reported to the authorities.

Unluckily this deletion does not hold well, occasionally with weird merchants only offering PayPal payment - credit card through PayPal - the paying fails using my old email used in the purchase and was used with PayPal before. They keep forcing me to log in. But can't! It is deleted!

I did not trust their sloppy ways then, the feeling is stronger now.

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

#69

Post by the_duke »

tchalla wrote: post #15
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 the…

The resistance against instant payments mostly has to do with technicalities around bank balance sheets and inter-bank settlement systems.

It's a bit complex for a comment, but the TLDR is:

* funds in transit (called "positive float") are held in the banks account, and can be used by the bank to earn interest

* liquidity management - there are a bunch of considerations here, but the longer settlement periods enable banks to do "deferred net settlements" (just paying each other the difference between all transactions in a batched way) and also helps balance sheets in other ways, making it easier to meet reserve requirements, smoothing out intra-day liquidity, etc

The delay also means systems have more time to catch fraudulent transactions, and to block them before they happen.

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

#70

Post by tnolet »

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.

Wait till you learn about iDeal. Basically flawless online payments for 10+ years in the Netherlands. Dominates the entire online and offline markets. No cards, no signups, just your normal bank account.

P.S. lives in Germany 5+ years and can attest its banks and online banking are generations behind its neighboring countries. A travesty.

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