Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
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Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
#2This is nothing new, like article states. What interests me is that why would tech group that most likely knew PayPal shameful history still trust them with payment solution? Why is it that every one and each enterprenour or new startup has to go with paypal?? Do you really want to learn on your own skin?? This is not 2006 anymore! There is so many other alternatives, some less expensive, that you just need to let PayPal go. Also most of them are very trustworthy so that customers don't really care whether you use PayPal, Dwolla, Stripe or Authorize.net.
Re: Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
#3As a general rule of thumb. If you have a pretty predictable business then go with an all in one payment gateway and merchant accounts. By predictable I mean your growth is steady but not spectacular and not prone to any seasonal or suddenly dramatic spikes. Your price points don't move around dramatically. You're not something that will have a lot of chargebacks.
If your business DOES look like the above then engage a merchant account and explain to them what you are up to. It reduces the chances you'll get frozen.
If you can't qualify for a merchant account initially then use an all in one and build up a history that you can then take to a merchant account a little further down the road. (shameless plug for core.spreedly.com if you want the flexibility to shift and change easily)
Re: Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
#4Maybe there's a business idea in payment processing for events.
Re: Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
#5This is nothing new, like article states. What interests me is that why would tech group that most likely knew PayPal shameful history still trust them with payment solution? Why is it that every one and each enterprenour or new startup has to go with paypal?? Do you really want to learn on your own skin?? This is not 2006 anymore! There is so many other alternatives, some less expensive, that you just need to let Pa…
The reason people are forced to use PayPal for events is that for many people credit cards are impossible to get. PayPal is often much easier for more people to use.
Re: Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
#6How is this related to just conferences? PayPal doesn't have an anti-conference agenda.. There seems to be two things that set PayPal off.
1) Small volume to huge volume in a matter of days. 2) Taking payments for something happening in the future.
Story after story about both of these scenarios.
It seems obvious at this point that PayPal is not a good processor for things like pre-sales or events. It may be annoying but it's a liability for them and they do what they need to minimize it.
PayPal may be attractive because it's quick to setup but it seems easier for people to get in touch with a proper merchant account provider, discuss what you'll be selling ahead of time so they're prepared, and not get your funds frozen.
Update:
For anyone who is interested, here is PayPal's policy on pre-sales.
https://www.paypal-businesscenter.com/content/presale-policy...
Re: Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
#7Wow, I find it amazing that there is so much augery going on in this post. Ooo, maybe paypal hates python conferences! Maybe they just hate open source conferences!
And then they go on to describe how they refuse to kowtow to the obviously made up "needs of paypal's anti-fraud division".
There are lots of reasons to get mad at paypal but all too often the formula "We understood nothing about business, didn't even bother to familiarize ourselves with the law or financial regulations, and somehow problems resulted! We blame paypal!" is repeated all too often.
Let's look at this from the flip side. You decide you want to defraud a bunch of people, so you gin up a fake conference, it's easy to put up a fancy web page and sucker people in, then you take the money and run. You think this doesn't happen?
Paypal does have pretty crappy customer service, but if you expect to accrue a significant fraction of a million dollars in a paypal account and you don't think that somehow there might be some hoops to jump through then you are living in a fantasy world.
There's a reason why there is a lot of markup in event ticketing agencies (such as brown paper tickets, or event brite, or the hated ticket master), and it's not because it's such a fundamentally easy problem.
Edit: I'll say this again. It sucks when people who are working based on perfectly good intentions get hurt by the system but we live in a heavily regulated era. Expecting that you can operate a business without taking heed of the relevant regulations and business rules is massively naive. More so, it's a disservice to your customers. Imagine that you were running a 100% cash business. It would certainly make some parts easier, but don't you think people would start asking questions?
Re: Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
#8I can't help but mention Bitcoin here. For international things like open source events, it would work just perfectly. Especially given the tech audience that is attracted to these, Bitcoin might be the easiest way to pay for opensource conferences.
Re: Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
#9Maybe there's a business idea in payment processing for events.
I think there are enough payment services, we don't need another one. We need a central one. PayPal is really big and seen as many as the way for online payments. And I agree, it works really easily and good. Only there are the problems as mentioned in the article...
Re: Open Source Events Get Burned By PayPal
#10Wow, I find it amazing that there is so much augery going on in this post. Ooo, maybe paypal hates python conferences! Maybe they just hate open source conferences! And then they go on to describe how they refuse to kowtow to the obviously made up "needs of paypal's anti-fraud division". There are lots of reasons to get mad at paypal but all too often the formula "We understood nothing about business, didn't even bot…
How hard is it for PayPal to pay 10 people as community managers or developer evangelists to take care of this issue? Heck, smaller companies like Heroku do it with about 8 people and cover the globe.
Answer: They've already done it. They have the staff in place.
The problem is their community managers and developer evangelists are sticking to PayPal specific conferences. They aren't in touch with people like me and dare I say you, i.e. the little guy.