8 ms·
«In representations to your customers or in public communications, you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method. At all of your points of sale (i
by phyzome 10y ago
«In representations to your customers or in public communications, you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method. At all of your points of sale (in whatever form), you agree not to try to dissuade or inhibit your customers from using PayPal; and, if you enable your customers to pay you with PayPal, you agree to treat PayPal’s payment mark at least at par with other payment methods offered.»
If you have to add that to your User Agreement, what does that say about your service?
- chinathrow 10y agoI read that regarding all your PoS that Paypal is about to enter into direct competition with e.g. Apple Pay and others. Also, I read that they will raise costs soonish.
- elcapitan 10y ago"you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method" English is not my first language, does this mean that by calling PayPal a "payment method" i mischaracterize it? (is it a .. payment service .. whatever?) Or does it mean that I agree not to "mischaracterize" PayPal in general because I don't like it? (then why would I offer it)
- ksmithbaylor 10y agoI was confused by this language too. I think it means that in the context of PayPal being a payment method, you agree not to mischaracterize it in any way.
- thekevan 10y agoEnglish is my first language and I find the wording confusing as well.
- droithomme 10y agoYour english is good. It's very unclear what it means as the sentence can be parsed different ways. That suggests that either their lawyers are incompetent and shouldn't be let near a contract, or they are are competent and therefore are intentionally trying to fool their customers. It's probably incompetence though since this can work both ways. If PayPal tried to bring legal action with this clause, the first defense one would look at is to simply respond, "Where did I say it was a payment method? The clause says I can't mischaracterize it as a payment method, and I didn't." In any case as it reads most simply it says you can't call PayPal a payment method. I doubt that's what they really meant to say.
- randallsquared 10y agoIt can only be parsed different ways under incompatible assumptions about whether PayPal is a payment method. If it actually is a payment method (as their lawyers undoubtedly take as a given), then it limits mischaracterization to aspects of PayPal that do not involve its character as a payment method. Only if you already believe it is somehow "not a payment method" does the other reading make any sense.
- __s 10y agoI also interpreted it as "PayPal is not a payment method" when reading. Legal statements shouldn't rely on out-of-contract context to parse
- guptaneil 10y agoIANAL, but it's not exactly "out-of-contract." The term "payment method" appears 49 times in the User Agreement[1]. Having said that, a quick skim suggests the term is used inconsistently. Sometimes it refers to PayPal as a payment method, other times it refers to the information you enter into PayPal (ie credit card, bank account, etc) as payment methods. This is because PayPal is both a payment method itself and a wrapper service for many payment methods. For example: Your PayPal balance, if you used your PayPal balance as the payment method or a bank account as the payment method, once the money clears the bank. So while it is confusing, I don't think you'd get very far with the "PayPal is not a payment method" interpretation. 1: https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/ua/pdf/US/en_US/ua.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/ua/pdf/US/en_US/ua.p...
- droithomme 10y agoThat is not correct. When one contracting party is in a superior position, courts consistently rule against the drafter of the agreement when there is ambiguous language. It's a long held legal principle taught in contract classes at law school.
- 10y ago
- patio11 10y agoThis is de rigeur in payments; the brand guidelines for the big three credit card companies have similar things IIRC. They don't want you to say "Visa accepted here THOSE BASTARDS we prefer Amex" or otherwise interfere with their customer relationships while servicing your customer relationships. There has been litigation around this routinely, including (IIRC) a US holding that says that merchants are allowed to say X is cheaper for them than Y if that statement is accurate. Edit: that may have been reversed on appeal. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/american-express-wins-ruling-reversing-merchant-fee-decision https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/american-...
- toomuchtodo 10y agoMaybe it's only my anecdotal experience, but I've seen a lot more merchants lately flat out stop accepting expensive payment methods like Amex, and these were all merchants that I had previously been able to use Amex at before.
- twblalock 10y agoAmex is in a bit of trouble for a few reasons: 1. Competing card companies offer much better cards than they used to, and include benefits that only Amex used to provide. For example, Visa Signature and Mastercard's competing product offer return coverage, extended warranties, free rental car insurance, etc. 2. One of the main draws of accepting Amex was that Amex's customer base was more affluent than that of other card companies, but that is no longer the case, partly because of #1. 3. Amex lost the Costco deal. That's a loss of a great deal of credit card fees, and 10% of Amex cards were the Costco card. The court case was also seen as a blow, but maybe not if it got reversed on appeal. In any case, there are plenty of other problems for Amex to worry about.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoOh for sure! I myself no longer feel like I'm getting as much value from my $450/year Platinum charge card with Amex and am looking to switch to the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, as it's a visa (taken everywhere), has a better rewards program, and provides far more services for that same $450/year annual fee.
- Buge 10y agoPart of it seems to be saying you can't charge people extra fees to use paypal. I know sellers sometimes try to do the same thing with credit cards, charge extra fees to credit card users.
- hydrogen18 10y agoI usually just do the opposite. I mark everything up knowing that somewhere a cut will be taken. If you have to pay me cash, then I just make more on that transaction.
- chipperyman573 10y agoIf you're able to sell something at the same rate with an increased price, you should've been doing that before you heard about the credit cards' cut.
- hydrogen18 10y agoYou're forgetting the convenience factor that the payment service creates in the market. Let's say I sell trinkets for $10/each online. They are nice trinkets, but no one really needs my trinkets. No one is going to send me a money order in the mail for a single trinket for $10. Basically, there is no online market at all, unless I can make it easy to buy my product. But if I charge $11/each and accept Paypal (or credit cards in general), I now have a real market for my trinkets. People like my trinkets, so they will gladly click on a Paypal icon and send me the money that way. Now my trinkets are somewhat popular. A couple times a year someone stops by my workshop and asks to buy a trinket in person. I still charge them $11.
- Paul-ish 10y agoCould I try to get around this by offering two "different" (sharpie a red dot on the bottom of the lamp) items, one you can purchase with paypal and another you cannot. Can Paypal require you to accept paypal on everything your business sells?
- fencepost 10y agoWell, if I can't "mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method" then how can I "treat PayPal's payment mark at least at par with other payment methods offered"? Their use of "other payment methods" would imply to me that they consider PayPal also to be a "payment method" though I suppose they might want to call it Bob instead. I can just see it now: "PayPal is not a legitimate payment method! If you doubt this, see their Terms & Conditions where they explicitly state that you may not 'mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method.'" Someone did a really crappy job of phrasing.
- cnnsucks 10y ago>> Someone did a really crappy job of phrasing. Legal work is an area of life where one should not apply Hanlon's razor by default. Not one comma or period in that work went unscrutinized by highly compensated executive talent at PayPal and any ambiguity you find is deliberate. Assume malice.
- arkades 10y agoThis can't be understated. My wife is a mid-tier firm attorney in (a field). Any contract generally has a low-level associate take a pass at the material, which she then scrutinizes, polishes, etc. and then shares with her supervising attorney, who also scrutinizes and polishes. This is then shared with the client, who has their own staff to scrutinize, who are relevant executives, content experts, and often in-house attorneys of their own. Several iterations of this cycle are the bare minimum. Because this process involves low-tier associates being taught by upper level attorneys, the "basic" stuff that top experts take for granted gets scrutinized and explained, as well, so even the parts you think of as "stock components" are being carefully looked over and considered at length. There isn't a single word in those contracts that hasn't been reviewed by at least a half-dozen experts.
- Silhouette 10y agoIt's still an ambiguous construction in the middle of a standard form contract, which is bad news for whoever drafted the contract in many legal systems. And from my experience of lawyers, highly paid or otherwise, incompetence is just as plausible an explanation for their bad work as anyone else's.