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Because they provide security for the users. With paypal, I can buy from any random sellers, and know that in the worst case, I am risking just a purchase amou

by theamk 8y ago

Because they provide security for the users. With paypal, I can buy from any random sellers, and know that in the worst case, I am risking just a purchase amount. Security is hard, and even if someone makes great products, that does not mean they are great programmers. For a small or a medium store, I always assume that their website will be hacked and entire database will be stolen (it is really sad how often this happens). Entering credit card directly just means more problems for me down the line. This means some sort of trusted checkout service. Stripe has no extra security, so this leaves Paypal or Google Checkout. I think the latter has died (I have not seen it for a while), so this leaves Paypal.

paulie_a 8y ago
Basically PayPal takes a hostile attitude towards sellers. "Oh you have done millions of dollars with us over years and this new account is making a very flimsy complaint, well fuck you" At a certain point PayPal is actively and knowingly participating in scams.
- YeahSureWhyNot 8y ago
  PayPal sides with a buyer regardless of how established your business is and how many thousands of legitimate shipment of product you have made. Buyer called saying they didnt get the package that UPS driver left at their door step? full refund of 1100 dollars at seller's expense. As a business owner, I don't accept PayPal for these reasons.
  - ptd 8y ago
    But as a consumer, you understand why this is so powerful. Anytime a customer has to get into a he said she said with a company, the company usually wins, especially if there is money involved. It’s nice to use PayPal and not have to worry about convincing vendors like you that x, y, or z happened.
    - paulie_a 8y ago
      Yes it is powerful. I can blatantly scam people as a buyer. It's a thief's dream. Oh hey this seller has had 100,000 transactions with very minimal issues...this buyer has 1...oh well the buyer must be right.
      - ptd 8y ago
        One might argue traditional payment is a theif’s dream, but from the other side. Customer has an issue? Not our problem, we don’t have to refund.
        paulie_a 8y ago
        Well then reputation comes into play. It's a judgement call. Sometimes it won't come out right, but buyer always wins is bullshit. Hopefully someone puts together a service sellers can just start blacklisting buyers.
        ptd 8y ago
        Fair enough, I definitely see where you’re coming from, just trying to bring in the honest consumers perspective. I can see how the PayPal system would be threatening.
  - analog31 8y ago
    For better or worse, this is what the consumer expects. First of all, if they don't get a refund through PayPal, they will just get a chargeback through their credit card, and you're still screwed. Second, you're competing with large online and storefront merchants who offer no questions asked refunds. In fact, offering generous refunds may be cheaper than quality control for those merchants. Those merchants make money by having a pretty good statistical handle on the rate of returns, and baking it into their prices. The trick is to make sure your cost is low enough relative to your selling price. Granted, a big vendor has an advantage in access to good statistics, whereas a small business can't plan for it very well. But I think it does create a situation where PP or any other payment processor works for some businesses and not others. You have to decide if PP is the right technology for your business.
    - tluyben2 8y ago
      > they will just get a chargeback through their credit card, and you're still screwed I am not in the US and most card sales we did were debit cards by far and there chargeback is usually far more difficult, which indeed, showed us a lot better result than purchases through PP. I would never use them again as merchant.
    - mariuolo 8y ago
      > First of all, if they don't get a refund through PayPal, they will just get a chargeback through their credit card, and you're still screwed. Will that affect their standing with PayPal somehow?
analog31 8y ago
I'm a PayPal merchant. I manufacture and sell a little gadget for a fairly esoteric and non computer related hobby. PayPal is the only payment service that doesn't require me to write any code, or to maintain a server that can run server-side code. It also doesn't require me to store any customer information on a server. I download a transaction history in PDF format every year for my taxes, and I delete the customer information, just leaving the dollar amounts. I don't want your steenkin personal info. Hack away, there's nothing to steal. ;-) Oddly enough, I'm a pretty good programmer and I love to write code, but also as a lone wolf, I think maintaining a secure website against adversaries who are smarter than me, is over my head. And it's not my business. I kinda started this business as an escape from code. There are a few customers who really really don't like PP, so I have to offer an "out" and for my little business, they're OK with sending a money order. Oddly enough there is a strong correlation between those customers, and customers who want to talk with me on the phone. There will always be a few people who just have not gotten into the whole computer thing. It is quite possible that I'm lucky to be in a little market niche where nothing ever goes wrong with orders. My product is a tangible physical deliverable. I am quick to refund if someone is unhappy.
- mkhalil 8y ago
  I am interested now...what is thou product!?
- catskull 8y ago
  Took the words out of my mouth. I'd love a contingency, but to set up stripe I'd need some server (or "server less" function), write my own shopping cart, write my own order fulfilment system, write a shipping integration, and even then it wouldn't be as trusted as PayPal. Or, I could pay some company $20 a month to do it for me. Just doesn't make sense. I cannot understand why stripe does not have a competing solution for this.
  - gomox 8y ago
    There are a bunch of invoicing/simple billing Stripe integrations with third parties. I don't know why they don't offer a baked-in product for this and/or promote their brand to consumers more.
int_19h 8y ago
I think Amazon also has some kind of checkout service. At least I've seen "Use Amazon to Pay" on some websites, and it works similar to "Use PayPal".
- leeoniya 8y ago
  yes, Amazon Pay or its more intrusive brother, Login With Amazon. We implemented Amazon Pay a few months ago and have seen a couple dozen transactions, vs hundreds with PayPal and thousands with credit cards. It's not huge, but people do use it. Would those people have bailed if all we offered was Paypal and credit cards? Probably not. Good convenience on mobile not to have to re-enter cc info and risk another place mis-using it.
cpncrunch 8y ago
>Because they provide security for the users. And for the sellers too. I've been using paypal for 13 years, and I've never had a single issue with anyone using a stolen card, and I don't think I've even had any chargebacks during that time. I previously used Worldpay and regularly had issues with chargebacks and fraudulent transactions. Paypal goes to extreme lengths to ensure a transaction is not fraudulent. It can be somewhat annoying as they occasionally reject customers' cards for no apparent reason, but overall I appreciate their security measures. Tip for anyone in Canada, Australia, EU or UK accepting US$ transactions through paypal: withdraw your money through Transferwise and you'll pay 0.5% instead of 1.5% or 2.5%.
- ttty 8y ago
  How do you withdraw with TransferWise?
  - cpncrunch 8y ago
    Set up a Transferwise US$ borderless account, and then add it as a bank account to paypal using the ACH routing number. Then you can withdraw from us$ paypal to us$ transferwise (zero fees), then transfer from transferwise to your local bank account (roughly 0.5% forex fee).
  - matthewheath 8y ago
    Sign up for their borderless account: https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/ https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/ It enables you to receive money from over 30 countries without any fees. You get bank details for: * Australia * UK * Eurozone * US * New Zealand So you can take payouts from any of those countries (e.g. USD goes to your US bank account attached to the borderless account, GBP to your UK bank account, and so on.)
    - ttty 8y ago
      But how do you add the account to PayPal, you can only put sort and account number, not the American USD bank account details. I can only put a 6 digits sort code, not the ACH which has more than 6 digits.
rospaya 8y ago
Not just security, but a brand. PayPal equals "American Express" or "Mastercard" with some people and they trust it for online transactions, which are still considered at least a little bit sketchy somewhere. My parents for one.
NightlyDev 8y ago
It's not like you're storing card data because you're using Stripe. Stripe also allows 3D Secure to be used, so Stripe is clearly the more secure option compared to PayPal.
- theamk 8y ago
  All Stripe checkouts that I have seen so far are embedded into seller's website. I do not care where the form submits to or how does backend looks -- as long as address bar shows merchant's website address, the form could be fake or scrapped via evil javascript. This makes Stripe significantly less secure than Paypal. (I've heard that Stripe can do checkouts on it's own domain, but I haven't seen it on a real website) And as for 3D Secure -- it has no benefit for customer, just an extra password to remember. I am not sure why banks waste time implemeting it, when other systems (like real-time notification of charges on my cell phone) would be significantly more useful.
  - tpetry 8y ago
    A good implementation helps with leaked credit card information if every transaction would use 3D Secure. I dont need to remember an extra password for my bank (n26). I have to login to the app on my mobile and sinply allow the transaction by a tap. Easy as that, much more secure. I was impressed when i saw itctge first time.
    - jjevanoorschot 8y ago
      One of the reasons that merchants do not enable 3DS for all transactions is that it hurts conversion. However, from September 14, nearly all online transactions in the EU will need to be authenticated by 3DS (2.0). 3DS 2.0 is supposed to be a much smoother experience, thereby reducing the negative effect that it has on conversion.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  Outside the US you can't assume that every customer actually has a credit card. Using it as the only payment method would probably halve our sales here in europe. The beauty of Paypal is that it allows to add your bank account as a source of funds using it as instant payment method where otherwise a SEPA transfer (and 1-2 days of delay) would be the only popular alternative to a credit card.

by theamk 8y ago

paulie_a 8y ago

Basically PayPal takes a hostile attitude towards sellers. "Oh you have done millions of dollars with us over years and this new account is making a very flimsy complaint, well fuck you" At a certain point PayPal is actively and knowingly participating in scams.

YeahSureWhyNot 8y ago
PayPal sides with a buyer regardless of how established your business is and how many thousands of legitimate shipment of product you have made. Buyer called saying they didnt get the package that UPS driver left at their door step? full refund of 1100 dollars at seller's expense. As a business owner, I don't accept PayPal for these reasons.
- ptd 8y ago
  But as a consumer, you understand why this is so powerful. Anytime a customer has to get into a he said she said with a company, the company usually wins, especially if there is money involved. It’s nice to use PayPal and not have to worry about convincing vendors like you that x, y, or z happened.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    Yes it is powerful. I can blatantly scam people as a buyer. It's a thief's dream. Oh hey this seller has had 100,000 transactions with very minimal issues...this buyer has 1...oh well the buyer must be right.
    - ptd 8y ago
      One might argue traditional payment is a theif’s dream, but from the other side. Customer has an issue? Not our problem, we don’t have to refund.
      - paulie_a 8y ago
        Well then reputation comes into play. It's a judgement call. Sometimes it won't come out right, but buyer always wins is bullshit. Hopefully someone puts together a service sellers can just start blacklisting buyers.
        ptd 8y ago
        Fair enough, I definitely see where you’re coming from, just trying to bring in the honest consumers perspective. I can see how the PayPal system would be threatening.
- analog31 8y ago
  For better or worse, this is what the consumer expects. First of all, if they don't get a refund through PayPal, they will just get a chargeback through their credit card, and you're still screwed. Second, you're competing with large online and storefront merchants who offer no questions asked refunds. In fact, offering generous refunds may be cheaper than quality control for those merchants. Those merchants make money by having a pretty good statistical handle on the rate of returns, and baking it into their prices. The trick is to make sure your cost is low enough relative to your selling price. Granted, a big vendor has an advantage in access to good statistics, whereas a small business can't plan for it very well. But I think it does create a situation where PP or any other payment processor works for some businesses and not others. You have to decide if PP is the right technology for your business.
  - tluyben2 8y ago
    > they will just get a chargeback through their credit card, and you're still screwed I am not in the US and most card sales we did were debit cards by far and there chargeback is usually far more difficult, which indeed, showed us a lot better result than purchases through PP. I would never use them again as merchant.
  - mariuolo 8y ago
    > First of all, if they don't get a refund through PayPal, they will just get a chargeback through their credit card, and you're still screwed. Will that affect their standing with PayPal somehow?

analog31 8y ago

I'm a PayPal merchant. I manufacture and sell a little gadget for a fairly esoteric and non computer related hobby. PayPal is the only payment service that doesn't require me to write any code, or to maintain a server that can run server-side code. It also doesn't require me to store any customer information on a server. I download a transaction history in PDF format every year for my taxes, and I delete the customer information, just leaving the dollar amounts. I don't want your steenkin personal info. Hack away, there's nothing to steal. ;-) Oddly enough, I'm a pretty good programmer and I love to write code, but also as a lone wolf, I think maintaining a secure website against adversaries who are smarter than me, is over my head. And it's not my business. I kinda started this business as an escape from code. There are a few customers who really really don't like PP, so I have to offer an "out" and for my little business, they're OK with sending a money order. Oddly enough there is a strong correlation between those customers, and customers who want to talk with me on the phone. There will always be a few people who just have not gotten into the whole computer thing. It is quite possible that I'm lucky to be in a little market niche where nothing ever goes wrong with orders. My product is a tangible physical deliverable. I am quick to refund if someone is unhappy.

mkhalil 8y ago
I am interested now...what is thou product!?
catskull 8y ago
Took the words out of my mouth. I'd love a contingency, but to set up stripe I'd need some server (or "server less" function), write my own shopping cart, write my own order fulfilment system, write a shipping integration, and even then it wouldn't be as trusted as PayPal. Or, I could pay some company $20 a month to do it for me. Just doesn't make sense. I cannot understand why stripe does not have a competing solution for this.
- gomox 8y ago
  There are a bunch of invoicing/simple billing Stripe integrations with third parties. I don't know why they don't offer a baked-in product for this and/or promote their brand to consumers more.

int_19h 8y ago

I think Amazon also has some kind of checkout service. At least I've seen "Use Amazon to Pay" on some websites, and it works similar to "Use PayPal".

leeoniya 8y ago
yes, Amazon Pay or its more intrusive brother, Login With Amazon. We implemented Amazon Pay a few months ago and have seen a couple dozen transactions, vs hundreds with PayPal and thousands with credit cards. It's not huge, but people do use it. Would those people have bailed if all we offered was Paypal and credit cards? Probably not. Good convenience on mobile not to have to re-enter cc info and risk another place mis-using it.

cpncrunch 8y ago

>Because they provide security for the users. And for the sellers too. I've been using paypal for 13 years, and I've never had a single issue with anyone using a stolen card, and I don't think I've even had any chargebacks during that time. I previously used Worldpay and regularly had issues with chargebacks and fraudulent transactions. Paypal goes to extreme lengths to ensure a transaction is not fraudulent. It can be somewhat annoying as they occasionally reject customers' cards for no apparent reason, but overall I appreciate their security measures. Tip for anyone in Canada, Australia, EU or UK accepting US$ transactions through paypal: withdraw your money through Transferwise and you'll pay 0.5% instead of 1.5% or 2.5%.

ttty 8y ago
How do you withdraw with TransferWise?
- cpncrunch 8y ago
  Set up a Transferwise US$ borderless account, and then add it as a bank account to paypal using the ACH routing number. Then you can withdraw from us$ paypal to us$ transferwise (zero fees), then transfer from transferwise to your local bank account (roughly 0.5% forex fee).
- matthewheath 8y ago
  Sign up for their borderless account: https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/ https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/ It enables you to receive money from over 30 countries without any fees. You get bank details for: * Australia * UK * Eurozone * US * New Zealand So you can take payouts from any of those countries (e.g. USD goes to your US bank account attached to the borderless account, GBP to your UK bank account, and so on.)
  - ttty 8y ago
    But how do you add the account to PayPal, you can only put sort and account number, not the American USD bank account details. I can only put a 6 digits sort code, not the ACH which has more than 6 digits.

rospaya 8y ago

Not just security, but a brand. PayPal equals "American Express" or "Mastercard" with some people and they trust it for online transactions, which are still considered at least a little bit sketchy somewhere. My parents for one.

NightlyDev 8y ago

It's not like you're storing card data because you're using Stripe. Stripe also allows 3D Secure to be used, so Stripe is clearly the more secure option compared to PayPal.

theamk 8y ago
All Stripe checkouts that I have seen so far are embedded into seller's website. I do not care where the form submits to or how does backend looks -- as long as address bar shows merchant's website address, the form could be fake or scrapped via evil javascript. This makes Stripe significantly less secure than Paypal. (I've heard that Stripe can do checkouts on it's own domain, but I haven't seen it on a real website) And as for 3D Secure -- it has no benefit for customer, just an extra password to remember. I am not sure why banks waste time implemeting it, when other systems (like real-time notification of charges on my cell phone) would be significantly more useful.
- tpetry 8y ago
  A good implementation helps with leaked credit card information if every transaction would use 3D Secure. I dont need to remember an extra password for my bank (n26). I have to login to the app on my mobile and sinply allow the transaction by a tap. Easy as that, much more secure. I was impressed when i saw itctge first time.
  - jjevanoorschot 8y ago
    One of the reasons that merchants do not enable 3DS for all transactions is that it hurts conversion. However, from September 14, nearly all online transactions in the EU will need to be authenticated by 3DS (2.0). 3DS 2.0 is supposed to be a much smoother experience, thereby reducing the negative effect that it has on conversion.
thirdsun 8y ago
Outside the US you can't assume that every customer actually has a credit card. Using it as the only payment method would probably halve our sales here in europe. The beauty of Paypal is that it allows to add your bank account as a source of funds using it as instant payment method where otherwise a SEPA transfer (and 1-2 days of delay) would be the only popular alternative to a credit card.