It’s ok, more competitors will come in now
PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
201–210 of 249 posts
Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
#202I presume the US banking industry pays lots to lobby and makes big campaign donations, gives senators offspring jobs, etc. In the old days we got great at check processing and lowered the cost to pennies. Processing a transaction should be close to free (especially in a debit scenario.) I just paid 1.4% on Coinbase to transfer USD to ALGO. (They probably make something on the spread also.) But 3%+ on a card? One thing I did hear from some retailers is that the cards that provide lots of benefits and cash back charge more to cover the benefits. That money has to come from somewhere.
Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
For anyone in the US, if I have your bank account number, I can steal your money. I strongly advise you not to share your account number with me or anyone else. I have to commit fraud in order to steal your money, making it a crime, but stealing's a crime in the first place, so that's not going to deter thieves.
Jeremy Clarkson fell victim to this. He published his bank details in his column to prove it was no big deal, and someone set up a £500 direct debit to charity.
Wow, I had no idea about Mr. Clarson's experience [1]. Is this also true in the USA?
Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
#204Paypal'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 key…
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this! I inherited a site with PayPal and it uses just a single link that takes you to PayPal and returns you after the transaction. Plus an endpoint to handle IPN pushes. I've looked into updating to the current API but it's just so confusing and awful, it took me a couple of days just to understand the new workflow.
Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Looking back, I have to imagine that this 3%+ tax on all American transactions must put a weight on the system. I 100% agree. It's pretty absurd that all merchants have to pay a 3% fee on the vast majority of their transactions with no real alternative. And I realize crypto gets a bad rap around here, but I really do think stablecoins offer an interesting way around this. It's an open standard that anyone can build…
> (and before someone yells "crypto fees", there are already solutions that can drive these well below $0.01 if we're just sending payments between 2 parties) Can you specify what you're referring to? As someone who frequently yells "crypto fees" my understanding is most low-fee options either (a) require transfers within a centralized ecosystem, (b) aren't likely to scale effectively as a system (e.g. bitcoin's ligh…
A lot of scaling solutions for Ethereum focus on being fully EVM compatible, and as such are forced to store every transaction on a widely distributed, permanent datastore, which in my mind is never going to be "cheap". Since we just need to move money around, payment channels [0] allow us to move the funds by just committing an entry and exit transaction to the widely distributed, permanent datastore, and once we "enter" this network, transactions can be very very cheap.
In terms of implementations, Bitcoin's lightning network is probably the biggest active version today, but this only allows you to move Bitcoin around, and hence is a non-starter for a widespread consumer adoption.
Which brings us to payment channels on Ethereum. It doesn't feel like there has been as much focus on the payments use case yet, and none of the solutions have as much adoption as Bitcoin's lightning network, but there are a few options I know of. Raiden network has been around for a while, visa is supposedly creating a "universal payments channel" [1], there's xdai [2] (not payment channels, and I'm not super familiar with this solution), and there's connext [3].
There's a long list here [4].
Basically it boils down to - payment channels are the solution, and it'll probably be a mix of self custodied wallets and custodial providers, all integrating with an open standard.
[0] https://hackernoon.com/how-we-built-the-largest-payment-chan...
[1] https://decrypt.co/82233/visa-universal-payment-channel-stab...
[2] https://www.xdaichain.com/
[4] https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/scaling/state-channe...
Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
#206I presume the US banking industry pays lots to lobby and makes big campaign donations, gives senators offspring jobs, etc. In the old days we got great at check processing and lowered the cost to pennies. Processing a transaction should be close to free (especially in a debit scenario.) I just paid 1.4% on Coinbase to transfer USD to ALGO. (They probably make something on the spread also.) But 3%+ on a card? One thin…
Processing fees have to cover chargebacks. That's processing fees in some industries prone to chargebacks (adult for instance) are eye-wateringly high. 10% or more in many cases.
Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say no crypto, but Nano was built for exactly this. You're not gonna beat zero fees.
Except it exhibits absolutely monstrous volatility. [edit] That's a lot like saying you can't beat the "$0 commission" at the airport currency exchange - true, but misleading. They wreck you elsewhere (in that case, in exchange rates). The truth is if Nano were "just as good" as sending dollars back and forth except free everyone would be using it. The fact they're not, this many years in, means you're missing someth…
Sure. There's always a downside to everything. OP wanted a solution for small donations, and Nano is still the best option. It's worth it to take on some volatility risk so that the people donating know that all their donation goes directly to you, and anyone in the world can donate any amount with or without a bank account, just by showing a short address on your site's page.
And no, it's not at all like an airport currency exchange. In that case there's a deliberate actor trying to defraud you. Volatility is a property of all assets. Some have far more than others. Just understand that and you'll be fine.
Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say no crypto, but Nano was built for exactly this. You're not gonna beat zero fees.
Zero fees? In crypto, there's an inverse correlation between on-chain fees and price volatility. So either you incur high on-chain fees or accept a high exchange rate risk.
Bitcoin and Nano move very closely together, yet one charges hundreds of thousands in fees every day and the other none at all. I'm not sure where you got that idea from.
Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love how Americans are totally fine with paying a tax on every transaction they make in order to protect random people from occurrences of financial fraud, yet are vehemently opposed to exactly the same system for healthcare. I mean, rationally you would expect the opposite: people typically don't do $10k+ transactions using credit cards, so a worst case consequence of fraud you're not protected from is quite small…
Oh, you’re giving us Americans too much credit, credit card fraud happens all the time. It’s like a constant thing you have to watch out for, and I’d estimate happens once every couple of years for most people. Either straight up fraud and theft, or just a recurring charge that will not stop no matter what. So the system is super broken and relevant to individuals, which is why people accept all the fees maybe. It’s…
> It’s like a constant thing you have to watch out for, and I’d estimate happens once every couple of years for most people. Either straight up fraud and theft, or just a recurring charge that will not stop no matter what.
Not in my experience. I probably have 10 to 15 credit cards for over a decade, and only once have I had a fraudulent transaction. And even if there was, you simply call the bank, dispute it, and that’s the end of that. Same with recurring charges.
It is even less of a problem going forward since EMV and contactless have become standard.
Re: PayPal raises fees for most domestic transaction types to 3.49% + $0.49
#210Paypal is a classic rent seeker. Nearly two years into pandemic, they still refuse to hire people for live customer service. Despite record profit. If anyone is looking for a startup idea: an online payment platform that charges on outbound bank transfers only. Heck charge 5% fee. And let all transactions be completely free.
Are you aware that the US Federal Reserve is deploying instant payments infrastructure in 2023? I believe the cost will be free to consumers, and pennies per transaction to businesses.
I'd expect online payments will integrate with banking providers to support initiating instant payments from deposit accounts, similar to Europe's IBAN instant payment system.
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/08/31/fednow-the-federa...
https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.h...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28393576 (a comment I previously wrote on this topic)