What I find weird about this is that JohnC has been saying for decades that large mergers are pretty bad for both companies. You spend 2,3 years in limbo, figuring out what in the world to do with the other large organization. When Stripe makes acquisitions it's historically been small companies, doing things Stripe isn't doing. It's the kind of situation where pc is unlikely to speak publicly here, but I sure would love to understand what the plan is, if just as a shareholder.
Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
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Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wero is essentially iDeal. iDeal is great.
Great for merchants, not so much for consumers. Once the merchant has your money it's very difficult to get it back if things go wrong.
Which is pretty much the case with Visa and MC too. There's little card payment fraud in Europe thanks to mandated strong authentication, and very low transaction fees as interchange is capped by the EU; card issuers don't initiate chargebacks so easily.
Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
#153Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
#154What I find interesting about this isn’t acquiring the flow from PayPal but the fact that PayPal has a bank charter and stripe doesn’t (not a real one, all that Georgia bank stuff is shenanigans). Properly structured this gives stripe a lot of interesting opportunities that they’ve had to delegate to partners and that dilutes not just their margins in the fee stack but restricts the types of transactions and merchants they can host, beyond the minimal regulatory constraint.
The next move would be to offer a stripe managed card network that captures the full MDR interchange fee stack, from issuance to processing to network to bank. They could offer deep discounts to merchants hosting their accounts on their bank issuing cards through them and processing through them by cutting out every middle man. It would instantly become the third largest network in terms of points of sale behind visa and Mastercard. They could further carve out heavy rewards for customers through direct relationships with airlines, hotels, and merchants through their existing issuer services. They would become the first fully integrated vertical in payments, and the efficiency that would give them in fees would allow them to crush the hodge podge payment stacks out there that exist. I’d wager in five years they would dominate the market.
Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paypal offshored all of their support staff.
They've been abysmal and borderline criminal since the start. They randomly withheld £20k from a business I was involved with for no stated reason and no direct means to talk to a human about it. It took months to resolve. And as for their actual website...
> They randomly withheld £20k from a business I was involved with for no stated reason and no direct means to talk to a human about it. It took months to resolve.
If only there was a regulatory framework to turn that into an extremely simple court case, and to also punish attempts of PayPal to ban users who stand up for access to their money.
If they’re a near-monopoly they shouldn’t be allowed to set their own rules.
Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
#156I will support this idea if they allow changing your PayPal handle! When they first introduced that feature, PayPal made it seem more frivolous than a username. In fact I don't even think they called it a username at the time. I decided to use it for a side project that didn't work out, then came to discover that the handle had become my permanent username for my personal account with no way to change it whatsoever. If you call your small ballpoint pen business @penisland but realize the lack of wisdom behind that handle, you're stuck with it for life. Paypal does not care and will not provide you with support.
I'm no longer a fan of Stripe, but if they fix that one issue I will happily use PayPal again.
Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
#157What I find interesting about this isn’t acquiring the flow from PayPal but the fact that PayPal has a bank charter and stripe doesn’t (not a real one, all that Georgia bank stuff is shenanigans). Properly structured this gives stripe a lot of interesting opportunities that they’ve had to delegate to partners and that dilutes not just their margins in the fee stack but restricts the types of transactions and merchant…
> but the fact that PayPal has a bank charter
When did it get one?
Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
#158What I find weird about this is that JohnC has been saying for decades that large mergers are pretty bad for both companies. You spend 2,3 years in limbo, figuring out what in the world to do with the other large organization. When Stripe makes acquisitions it's historically been small companies, doing things Stripe isn't doing. It's the kind of situation where pc is unlikely to speak publicly here, but I sure would…
On the other hand, reducing competition and consolidating the market within the combined organization is good for the misshapen franken-org that comes out at the end...
The question is whether or not they can weaponize the regulatory system to prevent smaller competitors from taking advantage of their confusion.
Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... because buyers trust it. I did until October 2022, when PayPal published an update to its Acceptable Use Policy that threatened to fine users $2,500 for promoting "misinformation". Like they were the arbiters of what is misinformation and worthy of economic penalty. While it was later rescinded, it was beyond the pale. It's proof that something is corrupt and completely out to lunch in their management, and I w…
> People are worried about authoritarianism, yet meekly cede such powers to a corporation? It boggles the mind. The libertarian answer is that corporations cannot threaten your freedom because you always have a choice of whether to deal with them or not. The libertarian answer is also mostly bullshit, but there is a kernel of a seed of a nugget of truth in there somehow.
For sure, on both counts. I'm just a bit astonished at how many people continue to do business with them, especially anyone who strongly denounces authoritarianism.
Re: Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've been abysmal and borderline criminal since the start. They randomly withheld £20k from a business I was involved with for no stated reason and no direct means to talk to a human about it. It took months to resolve. And as for their actual website...
Why would you keep any money on PayPal. It’s just a pass-through to your bank account, accepting payments without giving your bank details to strangers on the internet.
Once you start doing frequent business through PayPal, they begin 'holding' some of your money to form a buffer against chargebacks and fraud. This doesn't happen often at the consumer level, but dominates within the small business world.