PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49 • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#121

Post by tofukid » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:38 AM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #111

tofukid wrote: post #102

I still use PayPal because it has the best global coverage and least friction for consumers. Their new checkout form also seamlessly accepts credit/debit cards and does subscriptions. Many of my customers are in countries that aren’t supported by Stripe, so it’s not much of a choice from a business perspective.

Do you just use PayPal to accept credit/debits cards? Because there are alternatives to Stripe. They aren't as well made, but they do exist. For me, if I go to a site, that only accepts PayPal, then I'm won't be buying anything. I honestly don't trust PayPal, at all. If it's PayPal only, I assume it's fraud.

I accept PayPal and credit/debit cards, using “PayPal Checkout”. Go to https://LuckyResumeMaker.com and click “Download PDF” to see what PayPal checkout looks like.

Most customers pay with PayPal, but the credit/debit card option is seamless with PayPal. I think it’s even better than Stripe since it doesn’t always take someone to another page.

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#122

Post by petercooper » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:44 AM UTC

It's even more fun if you operate cross border because on top of all the usual fees there's a cross border fee (of 2% if the buyer was in the US) and then a markup on currency conversion of 3.75%. We used to put a lot through PayPal's merchant system but are now almost entirely on Stripe due to this non-stop nickel and diming.

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#123

Post by nicoburns » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:46 AM UTC

stephen_g wrote: post #106

Reason077 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merchant fees for both debit and credit cards are significantly lower in all EU countries (and UK), compared to the US, thanks to the interchange fee regulation (IFR) that caps interchange fees at 0.2% for debit card and 0.3% for credit cards. This translates into much lower merchant fees. Even a tiny startup with zero transaction volume can easily get less than 2% on their physical card transactions (using something…

Interesting. In Australia you can charge a surcharge, but only what the interchange fee cost you. So airlines especially used to charge large fees, like $12 or something, and now can only charge a few dollars.

Before this law in the UK it was mostly small businesses (e.g. local independent grocery stores) charging 50p per transaction. I think the law was probably to encourage uptake of contactless payments which are targeted at these small transactions.

It's still legal here to have a minimum transaction value for paying with card, which some businesses use. But since the pandemic it's become more common to find businesses that don't accept cash than the other way around.

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#124

Post by speleding » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:48 AM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #59

When I moved to the Netherlands, I was at first irritated that my credit cards weren't accepted anywhere. But as the debit (maestro) card transactions are often free [1], paying 3%+ to a card service does seem exorbitant. For online payments, the Dutch use the IDEAL system, which is even easier than online credit cards. This also prevents vendor lock-in, like Amazon. And, the banking apps make it super easy to send m…

One fee that Dutch banks have, and PayPal does not, is negative interest on your balance over €100K. So as a small business owner I park excess cash there, which makes up a little bit for the high fees when customers choose PayPal.

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#125

Post by jokethrowaway » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:48 AM UTC

jiggunjer wrote: post #117

Bombthecat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you can blame compliance for that. PayPal is back since a very very long time already... And its getting bigger and bigger by the day, so it should scale. Not increase cost.. I'm pretty sure they do it: A) for the stock B) because they are a monopol (almost)

Monopoly in what? I've never used paypall in any physical or online payment.

It's the prisoner's dilemma. Merchants using PayPal can't charge more on PayPal transactions so they increase the price of all their items for all customers. For card transactions they pocket the extra profit and likely then use it to pay PayPal fees and refunds. A similar mechanism happens for credit card chargebacks.

All customers pay for this feature.

When given the choice between credit card or PayPal, customers can get PayPal protection or not for the same price. If they use PayPal they perpetuate the story that people prefer PayPal and contribute to generally higher prices to account for PayPal refunds, mostly damaging themselves in the long run (given we already have laws in place that force merchants to refund / return items and most merchants are not scammers) and benefitting PayPal.

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#126

Post by jokethrowaway » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:53 AM UTC

bserge wrote: post #5

Still the easiest way to start selling online, at least in Europe... They've got the low volume starter business niche by the balls.

I completely disagree. Stripe or Paddle if you want them to take care of vat nightmares

Also gumroad if you want a platform

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#127

Post by MilaM » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

konschubert wrote: post #86

Paypal is a pretty scammy service also on the consumer side. When paying in foreign currency, they try to trick users into using their "conversion" service, which helpfully charges a bit more money to your credit card than you would have paid without their "assistance".

Totally agree. I feel scammed every time I have to change the currency during the payment process. Some time ago, I don't remeber when they changed it, you used to be able to opt-ou of currency exchange permanently per credit card. It was a very well hidden setting and I had to google the deep link every time to find it. Nowadays you have to explicitly disable it for each and every transaction.

I'm pretty sure though that most PayPal customers have no clue about this practice or just don't care.

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#128

Post by twoslide » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 9:58 AM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #78

twoslide wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit of a stretch to equate Paypal with "all American transactions." There are of course Visa/Mastercard (variable but about 2%), debit cards, Venmo, and older bank transfer technologies (ACH).

A service that costs a fraction of a cent to perform but charges tax on total revenue plus a big old fee has a big barrier to entry or it has zero customers tomrrow. "all american transactions" - who cares what proportion it is? It's the most vulgar display of market power imaginable. "We will tax this large chunk of the economy." And I'm not even seeing anyone saying they won't get away with it. It's really quite as…

Would you propose a national price cap on transaction charges? It would be hard to justify intervening in this way, given that there is plenty of competition and rates are not very different. Any transaction (even cash) has associated costs.

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#129

Post by ghoomketu » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:03 AM UTC

Paypal's API is one of the biggest nightmare I have to deal with lately(1). As much as Paypal has sucked, at least it was super simple to integrate before: just set amount, freq, period, return url and ipn url and that was pretty much it and that's why even noobs loved PP and integrated it everywhere.

The new API otoh, no it has to render button dynamically using Javascript, with some very confusing REST api, API keys and tokens and a sandbox mode and endpoints URLs which change frequently for no reason. Even the page down button does not work on the API age, just to give you an idea how bad this whole thing is.

It's like the team who made the API and the sellers (the end-user) have never spoken once to each other.

(1) https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/overview/

Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49

#130

Post by c12 » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 10:11 AM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #90

dr_dshiv wrote: post #59

When I moved to the Netherlands, I was at first irritated that my credit cards weren't accepted anywhere. But as the debit (maestro) card transactions are often free [1], paying 3%+ to a card service does seem exorbitant. For online payments, the Dutch use the IDEAL system, which is even easier than online credit cards. This also prevents vendor lock-in, like Amazon. And, the banking apps make it super easy to send m…

Merchant fees for both debit and credit cards are significantly lower in all EU countries (and UK), compared to the US, thanks to the interchange fee regulation (IFR) that caps interchange fees at 0.2% for debit card and 0.3% for credit cards. This translates into much lower merchant fees. Even a tiny startup with zero transaction volume can easily get less than 2% on their physical card transactions (using something…

Due to Brexit merchant fees in the UK are no longer capped.

Visa for example, plan to increase the interchange fee on digital payments made between European customers and British businesses from 0.3% to 1.5%. Other providers will surely follow.

Still lower fees than in the states but probably not for long.