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

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

#41

Post by Symbiote »

londons_explore wrote: post #20
brnt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this, and all that other Silicon Valley financial infra, because direct bank tranfers are (presumably?) not known or difficult or impossible. From my northwestern European perspective, it's weird this straightforward solution that we've had since, well, the fifties? is overlooked.

Address books in phones don't store people's Bank details, making it a pain to pay someone. Many people don't have their own bank details memorized either. Being able to send money to someone just knowing their phone number is the real value-add.

Within several European countries they do, since the banking systems support sending a payment using a phone number. You get confirmation of the recipient's name before pressing "send".

It's MobilePay in Denmark and Finland, Vipps in Norway, Swish in Sweden, PayM in Britain, etc.

For example, we split a restaurant bill at the weekend. In roughly the time it took one person to pay the whole bill on a card, the rest of us had sent ¼ each to her using her phone number. There are no fees for this.

In the next year or two, this should start to work internationally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Mobile_Payment_System...

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

#42

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

brnt wrote: post #37
ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud. Hacked bank accounts. Chargebacks. The brutality of banking customer service. These are all good reasons. PayPal does have a dispute system for 'buyer/seller protection'.

You can only transfer to a number, you can't (easily) charge back already effectuated transfer, nor can you (with a consumer account) debit a number. All of these things are covered. Buyer protection has rarely been something one needs. Some (many nowadays?) banks offer insurance for this.

>Buyer protection has rarely been something one needs.

I disagree, I think it is the biggest factor. I used it several times and I know other people who have too.

>you can't (easily) charge back already effectuated transfer

I promise if you try to do something involving bank transfers without doing some form of 'Know Your Customer' you'll get people try to use bank accounts that are compromised in some way. You'll be getting calls from your bank and potentially lose money, and may get your bank account closed if you persist with that behavior

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

#44

Post by fighterpilot »

pjerem wrote: post #33
londons_explore wrote: post #6

It amazes me that despite not really modifying the core PayPal service for 10+ years, they are still a market leader. Parts of their business don't have much network effect, and competitors could totally rebuild the tech and eat away at the market share... Yet somehow that hasn't happened.

PayPal do have a network effect amongst customers who choses PayPal because they marketed for decades that purchases through PayPal are protected in case of issues.

That isn't a network effect

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

#45

Post by Bombthecat »

nine_k wrote: post #38
Urgo wrote: post #11

This was actually announced in a easy to miss email with the subject "Upcoming change to your account" sent on June 30 2021. It did get a little press that day but on the fee increase day I saw little reporting. These changes went into effect on August 2nd 2021. Here is a PDF that has a breakdown showing all the changes that happened that day [1] To PayPal's credit, this was their first rate increase in a very long t…

I blame the increased cost of compliance. And also the fact that they are one of the few established and widely accepted payment / transfer systems, so their customers aren't going to flee in droves.

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)

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

#46

Post by kristopolous »

nine_k wrote: post #38
Urgo wrote: post #11

This was actually announced in a easy to miss email with the subject "Upcoming change to your account" sent on June 30 2021. It did get a little press that day but on the fee increase day I saw little reporting. These changes went into effect on August 2nd 2021. Here is a PDF that has a breakdown showing all the changes that happened that day [1] To PayPal's credit, this was their first rate increase in a very long t…

I blame the increased cost of compliance. And also the fact that they are one of the few established and widely accepted payment / transfer systems, so their customers aren't going to flee in droves.

Or it could be just simple profit and the second thing you mentioned.

There's a narrative where companies are painted as regretfully rather than opportunistically raising prices, maybe they just want to make more money. That's kinda the point of the system after all

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

#47

Post by runeks »

saurik wrote: post #23
dessant wrote: post #7

PayPal is awful for small transactions, I regularily get donations for my projects that are literally 0 USD, because all of it is eaten away by PayPal fees, and even for a 5 USD donation you end up losing around 15% of the transaction amount. Do you know of any other service that is suitable for microtransactions, besides cryptocurrencies?

I don't know if they support it for accounts that are receiving contributions instead of payments (and I have no clue what is going on now with this new change today: I need to research this), but PayPal has also offered a "micropayments" tier that costs 5%+$0.05 instead of the 2.9%+$0.30, which is much better for small transactions. You had to activate it with customer support, though.

> You had to activate it with customer support, though.

I wonder why that is. Are they offering this service at a loss? If not, why not offer it to everyone automatically?

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

#49

Post by Dylan16807 »

Semaphor wrote: post #35
saurik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if they support it for accounts that are receiving contributions instead of payments (and I have no clue what is going on now with this new change today: I need to research this), but PayPal has also offered a "micropayments" tier that costs 5%+$0.05 instead of the 2.9%+$0.30, which is much better for small transactions. You had to activate it with customer support, though.

Is that actually mentioned anywhere, publically? We use it and as it’s account-wide, we always calculate which account we have to use to minimize fees.

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees#statemen...

https://www.paypal.com/gf/smarthelp/article/how-can-i-update...

The first page says it's 5% + 0.09 now, though.

Edit: Oh, fixed the first link, the page was using javascript to break anchor links for some reason.

Also that second page only exists on some versions of the site.

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

#50

Post by runeks »

pkulak wrote: post #13
dessant wrote: post #7

PayPal is awful for small transactions, I regularily get donations for my projects that are literally 0 USD, because all of it is eaten away by PayPal fees, and even for a 5 USD donation you end up losing around 15% of the transaction amount. Do you know of any other service that is suitable for microtransactions, besides cryptocurrencies?

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.
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