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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

#181

Post by account42 »

indigo945 wrote: post #171
Dylan16807 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is definitely a GDPR violation (for users in the EU). And heise.de has already gotten in trouble for this before.

That is not a GDPR violation, no. Most German newspapers do this, and it has been tried in court - it's legal. The court only mandated that the subscription fee cannot be substantially higher than the value of the data that would have otherwise been sold.

Most website also tried to click a hundred different buttons to opt out - that wasn't legal either. Just because enforcement hasn't caught up yet doesn't mean it's not a GDPR violation.

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

#183

Post by hadrien01 »

anal_reactor wrote: post #146
weinzierl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wero looks very much like a bureaucratic paper tiger to me. I do not know a single person that uses it despite the massive advertising campaign they are running. What really replaces Paypal in my everyday life is Revolut.

Half of Europe has widely used national systems for instant payments, the other half does not. The idea behind Wero is to unify this to one single system, available across whole Europe. For reference, I use these systems for like 80% of my online payments. Of course nobody's using Wero now because the whole thing isn't really online yet, just a pilot program on a few websites with a few banks.

> As of November 2024, the service counts 14 million users and 8 million transactions were made

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)

8 million transactions in only a few months (mostly in France), I wouldn't say "nobody's using Wero"

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

#184

Post by account42 »

hulitu wrote: post #167
heisenbit wrote: post #51

It is worth remembering that PayPal not only handles payments but also provides a degree of assurance to receive the goods. A pure payment system does not. From a customer perspective this can provide real value as filing a claim with PayPal gets merchants definitely to listen more closely.

> It is worth remembering that PayPal not only handles payments but It is _also_ worth remembering that PayPal not only handles payments but _also blocks acounts based on random issues_. A lot of people lost access to their Paypal accounts. /s Handle with care.

GP was talking about the assurance for buyers. The issues sellers face does not change what makes PP attractive to buyers.

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

#185

Post by pbmonster »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #178
pbmonster wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a banking barcode (or EPC QR if you prefer) displayed on the seller's webpage with unique reference + reading it with your phone and making the payment is that internet payment method via giro. The webshop uses PSD2 open banking to get notified of new transactions and knows when it is transferred. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. This is how services like Twint in Switzerland or PayPal in Germany have worked for…

? I open my bank app go to new transaction scan the IBAN of the seller and send the money. I think the time I made a paypall account added to the paypal transfer time is more then 20sec. I have my banking app anyway. dude honestly no idea what your point is. since instant and free giro transfer with more or less 3 clicks is the death pf anything else. why the fuck should I have an extra layer to my bank? Its insecure…

I'm in Switzerland, and am a customer of several Swiss and German banks. Because of that, I mainly use Twint, and I hope for the rest of us that Wero turns out as well or better than Twint did 10 years ago. The change is long overdue.

The thing Twint (and Wero and PayPal) allows is really easy, fast, cheap (not PayPal) and secure (not PayPal) online stores. Scan the QR Code on screen, 1 second later your download link replaces the QR code. Done.

Now, I'd like to know how to do that with SEPA/giro. PSD2 and open banking sounds promising. You seem knowledgeable. Why doesn't anybody use that (or do you have an example for a online store using it)? How fast is it really?

And why did it take so long? Twint is 10 years old, iDeal is 20 years old, PayPal is 25 years old.

Because once you have those capabilities, you can do a small firmware update on credit card readers with a display, and you can pay by app everywhere - no credit card, NFC or Google/Apple/Samsung pay integration neccessary.

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

#186

Post by thirdsun »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #93
pbmonster wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

? IBAN transactions are instant and free. All three of my banking apps offer adresse books. why couldnt i sent money back? I see the sender and the IBAN I can even in some cases cancell payments where are you at? me france germany italy and switzerland. Are you from the states or canada? The parent talked about europe.

> ? IBAN transactions are instant and free.

Instant transactions are a very recent development and are only starting to become common because banks are required by law to support them for free come October. Up until rather recently instant SEPA transfers were often either not supported or came with additional fees attached.

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

#187

Post by perlgeek »

hibikir wrote: post #35
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.

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…

It's fine to have a non-zero false-positive rate, when you then have an effective way to appeal decisions based on these false positives.

The lack of effective appeal seems to be the real problem with paypal.

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

#188

Post by schroeding »

amai wrote: post #182

Why do we use PayPal in Europe at all?

Because what is the alternative, with the same level of convenience and support by (online) shops? Genuine question, because I do not know any and would be happy to.

Wero is not supported by most shops (yet), Credit / Debit Cards often charge fees if the payment goes to a foreign country, direct transactions cannot be undone.

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

#189

Post by robin_reala »

schroeding wrote: post #188
amai wrote: post #182

Why do we use PayPal in Europe at all?

Because what is the alternative, with the same level of convenience and support by (online) shops? Genuine question, because I do not know any and would be happy to. Wero is not supported by most shops (yet), Credit / Debit Cards often charge fees if the payment goes to a foreign country, direct transactions cannot be undone.

Theoretically the alternative is whatever collection of local mobile payments EMPSA[1] manage to shackle together, but they’re taking an exceedingly long time to do it.

[1] https://empsa.org/

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

#190

Post by thirdsun »

mrweasel wrote: post #27
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.

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'…

I strongly disagree. The main advantage of Paypal and the reason for its popularity in Germany was the fact that it provided instant payments at a time when credit cards were very uncommon.

Cash on delivery was a huge pain since you had to potentially large amounts of cash ready to hand over to your postman upon delivery. That's the opposite of convenient.

Alternatively you could pay by bank wire transfer, which of course led to an additional delay of a day or two until your transfer actually arrived at the sellers bank account. Nobody wants to deal with barriers like these in ecommerce. Paypal was a godsend back then. Remember, barely anyone had a credit card in those days in Germany.

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