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Is PayPal still around simply because, as one of the earliest and one of the biggest payment facilitators on the Internet, it's become ubiquitous enough to not

Is PayPal still around simply because, as one of the earliest and one of the biggest payment facilitators on the Internet, it's become ubiquitous enough to not have to worry about being displaced? I cannot for the life of me understand how it's still a thing since every week there's yet another story of "PayPay did Shady Thing that a bank couldn't do and now I have no money and no way to get my money back." Why is PayPal not dead? In all my research I have never been able to come up with a good answer to that question. [edited to add] Aside from consumer ignorance of other options, that is.

oxryly1 11y ago
I'd switch to square, but since I don't have a debit card I can't use it. I can still use paypal (and annoy my friends in the process.) EDIT: To answer your question, paypal still exists for the same reasons banks exist when people hate them, and for similar reasons to why you'd hire a tour company or local guide when visiting a different country. They are embedded -- they offer increased access via established agreements with more financial entities. They have more mastery of the regulatory landscape than their competitors (especially startups). Finance is in many ways very traditional business, and paypal has invested in traditional parts of business. I'd bet they employ more lawyers than any other payment startup out there, for example.
- sageabilly 11y ago
  What kinds of transactions are you doing? Friendly ones between people you know, selling stuff on CL, eCommerce? I'm curious.
  - oxryly1 11y ago
    Just paying friends back for dinner and such.
    - sageabilly 11y ago
      Venmo is your new best friend.
      - hornbaker 11y ago
        And owned by PayPal.
        sageabilly 11y ago
        GFD I had forgotten that.
        superuser2 11y ago
        However unlike the Paypal-branded product, Venmo peer-to-peer payments are free.
    - finnn 11y ago
      Google Wallet?
analog31 11y ago
I use PP for my business. It has been 100% foolproof (survivor bias caveat applies). I have not found another service that does not require me to write code beyond basic html, or to maintain a website. I am aware of horror stories, and remain interested in alternatives.
- sageabilly 11y ago
  Have you looked into Amazon Payments? Also have you taken into account business that you might be losing specifically because you only use PayPal? Again, just asking out of curiosity- I want to know the reasons why PayPal is still being used (both from businesses and from consumers).
  - creshal 11y ago
    Amazon Payments has to be the most under-utilized payment method of the decade. It's insane – everyone and their dog have an Amazon account and you'd have massive user acceptance, yet it's used nowhere.
  - analog31 11y ago
    It must be a well kept secret. Looks like Amazon has one of those slick new web page designs where you have dig down through a few layers in order to find out what the product actually is, but that's OK. They seem to have created something with a strong resemblance to PP in terms of their fee structure and how it's used by a small time merchant like me. In other words, it might very well be a solution. I know that there is a certain fraction of people who have concluded that they will never use PP again, and I respect that. Offering two different possible payment plans might not add too much more complexity, and might sweep in some of those customers. PP may have gotten a lot of people early on, when their offerings were a whole lot simpler. My business is really: Take money, ship gadget. No overseas business -- getting a CE mark is too expensive. I didn't look for any kind of API, and have never needed to speak with a human. There may also be a trust issue (though Amazon is certainly trusted). A lot of merchants complain that PP tends to side with the customer in disputes, which I actually consider to be a good thing since I've never had any disputes.
- 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Semaphor 11y ago
> Why is PayPal not dead? Because of market saturation. Stripe just recently started an open beta here in Germany. There is Skrill but besides it being relatively unknown, they implemented fees for accounts unused for > 12 months and have generally more fees than paypal (for the consumer) And because of their consumer focus. I have read many stories about paypal and how their actions made many problems… for businesses. I don't see stories about them fucking over consumers, quite the opposite, they try to err on the side of them. At least that's my opinion. I probably wouldn't use PayPal should I ever start a business needing a payment processor, but as a consumer? It's awesome.
- kogepathic 11y ago
  > At least that's my opinion. I probably wouldn't use PayPal should I ever start a business needing a payment processor, but as a consumer? It's awesome. No, as a consumer PayPal is a fucking nightmare. Their customer service makes the stereotypical American DMV look like paradise (I don't live in the US, so I have only the image of the DMV from movies and TV). Seriously, if you have a problem, just try to get their customer service reps to give half a shit about you and your issue. They'll make you fax (it's 2015...) a million forms to prove your identity and your mother's maiden name and your pet rock's birth certificate, and then tell you that they can't help you with this problem, you'll have to resolve it with the seller. Their email response time is measured in glacial periods. Oh, and you want to buy something on eBay and you have some account credit? Well fuck you, you can't pay with PayPal. Your existing payment methods (credit card, direct connection to bank account) don't work. Add a new one, scumbag. Oh, but not one that's already on your account. Nope, we've seen right through your clever trick and won't allow it. In fact, you can't pay with a different credit card that's associated with another PayPal account, because fuck you, that's why. I finally, after endless hours trying different combinations, figured out that I had to consume the account credit before they would let me use my traditional methods of payment to pay for the transaction. You might say that you've never had the above problems, and that's fine. You've been incredibly lucky. I avoid using PayPal now whenever possible. They're the devil reincarnated.
  - Semaphor 11y ago
omfg 11y ago
We've been using PayPal for over 10 years. High volume. No complaints. Their dispute resolution service is better than others we've tried in the past (Braintree, BluePay). Fees are solid. Customer support team are pretty on top of things (if you feel like picking up a phone). Seems like people like to pick on PayPal because they want to see the new 'startups' win. But PayPal doesn't have to lose for them to win. To expand. We thought about switching to Stripe once. Implementation was fairly annoying compared to PayPal's which was surprising considering how loved they are by the dev community. Their fees were much higher. Support couldn't answer some relatively easy questions. Stupid turnaround time for bank deposits. I can understand how getting setup with a Stripe branded payment form is easy and saves some hassle for a new project. But as an established business they don't bring much to the table. We passed and skipped the obligatory 'X Sucks Because Y' article.
- mrweasel 11y ago
  We've had pretty much the opposite experience. We've used PayPal for a little less than a year. Setup is magnificently complex and perplexing. They assume that companies are people. There's no way in hell the CEO/owner of a business would spend 1.5 hour on the phone with an account manager, setting up the account. Want PayPal to transfer british pound to an non-british bank-account, then prepare for a world of pain. Their dispute resolution service is annoying a hell. Not that we don't want to resolve disputes with our customers, but we want to do it using our existing customer support channels. Not via PayPal. Having customers just randomly getting their money back without having contacted the business they bought the product from first isn't acceptable. It's the most expensive of all the payment solutions we offer our customer. Developer support is okay, but not helpful when their stuff doesn't work. We randomly get 500 errors from their REST api, which doesn't handle any sort of real volume. Black Friday pretty much killed PayPal. The PayPal web interface is the worst I've ever used. It's slow and almost impossible to search in. Searching using your own order numbers almost never works and you fall back to searching for customers last name, which is pretty much the only search that consistently work. We wouldn't use PayPal if our German customers didn't expect it.
  - omfg 11y ago
mcv 11y ago
Why is PayPal not dead? My guess is that it works well enough for most people. Gamble that you won't be the one to get your account frozen, and you might be okay. And I guess a lot of companies aren't aware of the risk of doing business with PayPal. But PayPal exists primarily because there's no reliable international internet payment infrastructure that allows direct payment from one real bank account to the other. We've for a system for that in Netherland, and every Dutch webshop uses it, but works only for payments within the country. We need something like that on an international scale.

oxryly1 11y ago

I'd switch to square, but since I don't have a debit card I can't use it. I can still use paypal (and annoy my friends in the process.) EDIT: To answer your question, paypal still exists for the same reasons banks exist when people hate them, and for similar reasons to why you'd hire a tour company or local guide when visiting a different country. They are embedded -- they offer increased access via established agreements with more financial entities. They have more mastery of the regulatory landscape than their competitors (especially startups). Finance is in many ways very traditional business, and paypal has invested in traditional parts of business. I'd bet they employ more lawyers than any other payment startup out there, for example.

sageabilly 11y ago
What kinds of transactions are you doing? Friendly ones between people you know, selling stuff on CL, eCommerce? I'm curious.
- oxryly1 11y ago
  Just paying friends back for dinner and such.
  - sageabilly 11y ago
    Venmo is your new best friend.
    - hornbaker 11y ago
      And owned by PayPal.
      - sageabilly 11y ago
        GFD I had forgotten that.
      - superuser2 11y ago
        However unlike the Paypal-branded product, Venmo peer-to-peer payments are free.
  - finnn 11y ago
    Google Wallet?

analog31 11y ago

I use PP for my business. It has been 100% foolproof (survivor bias caveat applies). I have not found another service that does not require me to write code beyond basic html, or to maintain a website. I am aware of horror stories, and remain interested in alternatives.

sageabilly 11y ago
Have you looked into Amazon Payments? Also have you taken into account business that you might be losing specifically because you only use PayPal? Again, just asking out of curiosity- I want to know the reasons why PayPal is still being used (both from businesses and from consumers).
- creshal 11y ago
  Amazon Payments has to be the most under-utilized payment method of the decade. It's insane – everyone and their dog have an Amazon account and you'd have massive user acceptance, yet it's used nowhere.
- analog31 11y ago
  It must be a well kept secret. Looks like Amazon has one of those slick new web page designs where you have dig down through a few layers in order to find out what the product actually is, but that's OK. They seem to have created something with a strong resemblance to PP in terms of their fee structure and how it's used by a small time merchant like me. In other words, it might very well be a solution. I know that there is a certain fraction of people who have concluded that they will never use PP again, and I respect that. Offering two different possible payment plans might not add too much more complexity, and might sweep in some of those customers. PP may have gotten a lot of people early on, when their offerings were a whole lot simpler. My business is really: Take money, ship gadget. No overseas business -- getting a CE mark is too expensive. I didn't look for any kind of API, and have never needed to speak with a human. There may also be a trust issue (though Amazon is certainly trusted). A lot of merchants complain that PP tends to side with the customer in disputes, which I actually consider to be a good thing since I've never had any disputes.
11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Semaphor 11y ago

> Why is PayPal not dead? Because of market saturation. Stripe just recently started an open beta here in Germany. There is Skrill but besides it being relatively unknown, they implemented fees for accounts unused for > 12 months and have generally more fees than paypal (for the consumer) And because of their consumer focus. I have read many stories about paypal and how their actions made many problems… for businesses. I don't see stories about them fucking over consumers, quite the opposite, they try to err on the side of them. At least that's my opinion. I probably wouldn't use PayPal should I ever start a business needing a payment processor, but as a consumer? It's awesome.

kogepathic 11y ago
> At least that's my opinion. I probably wouldn't use PayPal should I ever start a business needing a payment processor, but as a consumer? It's awesome. No, as a consumer PayPal is a fucking nightmare. Their customer service makes the stereotypical American DMV look like paradise (I don't live in the US, so I have only the image of the DMV from movies and TV). Seriously, if you have a problem, just try to get their customer service reps to give half a shit about you and your issue. They'll make you fax (it's 2015...) a million forms to prove your identity and your mother's maiden name and your pet rock's birth certificate, and then tell you that they can't help you with this problem, you'll have to resolve it with the seller. Their email response time is measured in glacial periods. Oh, and you want to buy something on eBay and you have some account credit? Well fuck you, you can't pay with PayPal. Your existing payment methods (credit card, direct connection to bank account) don't work. Add a new one, scumbag. Oh, but not one that's already on your account. Nope, we've seen right through your clever trick and won't allow it. In fact, you can't pay with a different credit card that's associated with another PayPal account, because fuck you, that's why. I finally, after endless hours trying different combinations, figured out that I had to consume the account credit before they would let me use my traditional methods of payment to pay for the transaction. You might say that you've never had the above problems, and that's fine. You've been incredibly lucky. I avoid using PayPal now whenever possible. They're the devil reincarnated.
- Semaphor 11y ago

omfg 11y ago

We've been using PayPal for over 10 years. High volume. No complaints. Their dispute resolution service is better than others we've tried in the past (Braintree, BluePay). Fees are solid. Customer support team are pretty on top of things (if you feel like picking up a phone). Seems like people like to pick on PayPal because they want to see the new 'startups' win. But PayPal doesn't have to lose for them to win. To expand. We thought about switching to Stripe once. Implementation was fairly annoying compared to PayPal's which was surprising considering how loved they are by the dev community. Their fees were much higher. Support couldn't answer some relatively easy questions. Stupid turnaround time for bank deposits. I can understand how getting setup with a Stripe branded payment form is easy and saves some hassle for a new project. But as an established business they don't bring much to the table. We passed and skipped the obligatory 'X Sucks Because Y' article.

mrweasel 11y ago
We've had pretty much the opposite experience. We've used PayPal for a little less than a year. Setup is magnificently complex and perplexing. They assume that companies are people. There's no way in hell the CEO/owner of a business would spend 1.5 hour on the phone with an account manager, setting up the account. Want PayPal to transfer british pound to an non-british bank-account, then prepare for a world of pain. Their dispute resolution service is annoying a hell. Not that we don't want to resolve disputes with our customers, but we want to do it using our existing customer support channels. Not via PayPal. Having customers just randomly getting their money back without having contacted the business they bought the product from first isn't acceptable. It's the most expensive of all the payment solutions we offer our customer. Developer support is okay, but not helpful when their stuff doesn't work. We randomly get 500 errors from their REST api, which doesn't handle any sort of real volume. Black Friday pretty much killed PayPal. The PayPal web interface is the worst I've ever used. It's slow and almost impossible to search in. Searching using your own order numbers almost never works and you fall back to searching for customers last name, which is pretty much the only search that consistently work. We wouldn't use PayPal if our German customers didn't expect it.
- omfg 11y ago

mcv 11y ago

Why is PayPal not dead? My guess is that it works well enough for most people. Gamble that you won't be the one to get your account frozen, and you might be okay. And I guess a lot of companies aren't aware of the risk of doing business with PayPal. But PayPal exists primarily because there's no reliable international internet payment infrastructure that allows direct payment from one real bank account to the other. We've for a system for that in Netherland, and every Dutch webshop uses it, but works only for payments within the country. We need something like that on an international scale.