9 ms·

Uruguayan artist blacklisted by PayPal because her name contains “iran”

62 points by jsheard 6y ago

jariel 6y ago
PayPal is possibly the worst offender of the 'new world order' where you can only ever speak to an algorithm. Totally arbitrary polices, they say 'they need this' then it doesn't work, they need more, or it takes 3 weeks, but they can't tell you how long. We need a new bit of regulation for the new era which requires companies to provide clarity on all operational aspects and timelines etc..
- diego_moita 6y ago
  How do you evaluate PayPal's competition? In particular, what is anyone's experience with Stripe. I am trying to implement payments on my site. I tried PayPal but found Stripe to be easier to deal with.
  - jariel 6y ago
    As a 'payment processor' they are somewhat different because Stripe is more for business, PayPal for individuals and small business. PayPal is considerably more 'interventionist' with sales, and they seek to protect buyers etc so it can be a huge problem sometimes. Stripe is more of a classical processor. Of course Stripe does not offer a user oriented alternative to the PayPal product. PayPal has many undocumented processes which make it very challenging to deal with.
    - owowow 6y ago
      My experience with PayPal was they would at least let you appeal when a limit was hit or you were flagged by their system. Stripe meanwhile bricked my account after misidentifying the category of business we were in, and refused to provide anything more than a form email when I reached out with documentation as to our SIC code and business practices. We switched to a FirstData reseller ultimately and pay $0.05 per transaction plus 0.2% over interchange now, its the least I have ever paid for card processing and the money is in my account next day. Stripe used to take a week to process payouts, often longer for bank account payments.
      - petargyurov 6y ago
        I am surprised to hear that about Stripe. I have never had anything but a great experience dealing with their customer support.
  - unionpivo 6y ago
    As far as I know Stripe is not a full competitor. I am end user, and for me paypal usual works fine, and I don't have to worry too much about entering my CC and personal info all over net. I like the fact, that only Paypal has to know my real name and address, and not every other website I migh want to purchase something from. I don't think there is an option for that with Stripe. Unless you mean just credit card processing, then sure Stripe can probably do better. But at least for some like me not supporting paypal means site needs to clear higer bar for me to buy something from you.
- tootahe45 6y ago
  If you think PP is bad, try their UK competitor Skrill. Can't verify KYC because it's automated. They're still scamming money from my account, last deduction was $300 for 'admin fee'. Cannot even get a reply from support. The worst part of these services is they let you deposit money THEN lock your funds for KYC, there needs to be a regulation to make these companies do KYC on registration, not after you have funds locked in.
- vertis 6y ago
  I stopped using PayPal because they won't let me add a UK debit card to my Australian PayPal account. Have now been using Transferwise for a couple of years and can highly attest that it's the way things should be for an international payment processor (they don't of course offer web payments without putting a card number in, but still amazing).
harry8 6y ago
There need to be real consequences for this kind of nonsense for people. Liberal estimate of missed earnings multiplied by 10 paid to the victim. Some fininte number of offences before the CEO spends a fortnight in jail. Computers are not and should not be a shield for taking full responsibility.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Perhaps if we shot everyone who wrote a bug there would no longer be any bugs.
  - harry8 6y ago
    Perhaps if we program our computers to commit crimes we should be totally beyond the reach of the law. See, snarky comments like that are easy, not particulalry clever, amusing nor helpful and bring down the tone of discussion. Maybe make your point a little better than that here?
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      "Off with their heads" comments are precisely at the level of discourse where my response is adequate. And you've outlined many good reasons in that second paragraph for that.
      - harry8 6y ago
        Financial implications as a consequences of committing theft with jail for repeat offence is actually the norm in civilized society. It's pretty radical to suggest that we have a situation where you should avoid consequence for it. Where on earth are you seeing "off with their heads?" Not from me. Are you really supporting financial incentive to make and not fix errors in your own favour? Should we apply that principle to bank tellers and shop assistants too or only if a computer is involved? Does it need to be a statistical algorithm? Or is an if statement good enough to shield you? I think maybe you're having a completely different argument with someone else?
stevefan1999 6y ago
This is nothing but a reincarnation of the Scunthorpe problem. Except this time a nation was considered a swear word due to imperialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
renewiltord 6y ago
But "Iran" is also a substring of a fairly common Anglophone name: Miranda. Miranda is a pretty common name according to the US Census so they've got to be hitting a lot of people, unless their implementation is like: "word.contains(stopword) and not accidental_stops.contains(word)" which is just hilarious. Haha, I'd love to hear from the engineer who wrote the feature.
- neuralRiot 6y ago
  “Iran” i also “they will go” or something similar in spanish.
barbegal 6y ago
The transaction was definitely declined but it seems unlikely that this was solely due to the username containing the sub-string "iran". The Bandcamp support engineer only speculated that this could be the cause. The user reports that they are able to use the Paypal account normally and they only get this error when attempting to pay Bandcamp however this may just be some special rules that Paypal implements when making payments to US companies from foreign accounts (it appears this user is in Uruguay).
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Nah these companies definitely block transactions based on these. How do I know? I'm Iranian and have experienced the wildest blocking systems. I was playing around with timezone once and set my timezone to tehran. My credit card company blocked my account and I couldn't get it back until i faxed a notarized form.

62 points by jsheard 6y ago

PayPal is possibly the worst offender of the 'new world order' where you can only ever speak to an algorithm. Totally arbitrary polices, they say 'they need this' then it doesn't work, they need more, or it takes 3 weeks, but they can't tell you how long. We need a new bit of regulation for the new era which requires companies to provide clarity on all operational aspects and timelines etc..

diego_moita 6y ago
How do you evaluate PayPal's competition? In particular, what is anyone's experience with Stripe. I am trying to implement payments on my site. I tried PayPal but found Stripe to be easier to deal with.
- jariel 6y ago
  As a 'payment processor' they are somewhat different because Stripe is more for business, PayPal for individuals and small business. PayPal is considerably more 'interventionist' with sales, and they seek to protect buyers etc so it can be a huge problem sometimes. Stripe is more of a classical processor. Of course Stripe does not offer a user oriented alternative to the PayPal product. PayPal has many undocumented processes which make it very challenging to deal with.
  - owowow 6y ago
    My experience with PayPal was they would at least let you appeal when a limit was hit or you were flagged by their system. Stripe meanwhile bricked my account after misidentifying the category of business we were in, and refused to provide anything more than a form email when I reached out with documentation as to our SIC code and business practices. We switched to a FirstData reseller ultimately and pay $0.05 per transaction plus 0.2% over interchange now, its the least I have ever paid for card processing and the money is in my account next day. Stripe used to take a week to process payouts, often longer for bank account payments.
    - petargyurov 6y ago
      I am surprised to hear that about Stripe. I have never had anything but a great experience dealing with their customer support.
- unionpivo 6y ago
  As far as I know Stripe is not a full competitor. I am end user, and for me paypal usual works fine, and I don't have to worry too much about entering my CC and personal info all over net. I like the fact, that only Paypal has to know my real name and address, and not every other website I migh want to purchase something from. I don't think there is an option for that with Stripe. Unless you mean just credit card processing, then sure Stripe can probably do better. But at least for some like me not supporting paypal means site needs to clear higer bar for me to buy something from you.
tootahe45 6y ago
If you think PP is bad, try their UK competitor Skrill. Can't verify KYC because it's automated. They're still scamming money from my account, last deduction was $300 for 'admin fee'. Cannot even get a reply from support. The worst part of these services is they let you deposit money THEN lock your funds for KYC, there needs to be a regulation to make these companies do KYC on registration, not after you have funds locked in.
vertis 6y ago
I stopped using PayPal because they won't let me add a UK debit card to my Australian PayPal account. Have now been using Transferwise for a couple of years and can highly attest that it's the way things should be for an international payment processor (they don't of course offer web payments without putting a card number in, but still amazing).

harry8 6y ago

There need to be real consequences for this kind of nonsense for people. Liberal estimate of missed earnings multiplied by 10 paid to the victim. Some fininte number of offences before the CEO spends a fortnight in jail. Computers are not and should not be a shield for taking full responsibility.

renewiltord 6y ago
Perhaps if we shot everyone who wrote a bug there would no longer be any bugs.
- harry8 6y ago
  Perhaps if we program our computers to commit crimes we should be totally beyond the reach of the law. See, snarky comments like that are easy, not particulalry clever, amusing nor helpful and bring down the tone of discussion. Maybe make your point a little better than that here?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    "Off with their heads" comments are precisely at the level of discourse where my response is adequate. And you've outlined many good reasons in that second paragraph for that.
    - harry8 6y ago
      Financial implications as a consequences of committing theft with jail for repeat offence is actually the norm in civilized society. It's pretty radical to suggest that we have a situation where you should avoid consequence for it. Where on earth are you seeing "off with their heads?" Not from me. Are you really supporting financial incentive to make and not fix errors in your own favour? Should we apply that principle to bank tellers and shop assistants too or only if a computer is involved? Does it need to be a statistical algorithm? Or is an if statement good enough to shield you? I think maybe you're having a completely different argument with someone else?

stevefan1999 6y ago

This is nothing but a reincarnation of the Scunthorpe problem. Except this time a nation was considered a swear word due to imperialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

renewiltord 6y ago

But "Iran" is also a substring of a fairly common Anglophone name: Miranda. Miranda is a pretty common name according to the US Census so they've got to be hitting a lot of people, unless their implementation is like: "word.contains(stopword) and not accidental_stops.contains(word)" which is just hilarious. Haha, I'd love to hear from the engineer who wrote the feature.

neuralRiot 6y ago
“Iran” i also “they will go” or something similar in spanish.

barbegal 6y ago

The transaction was definitely declined but it seems unlikely that this was solely due to the username containing the sub-string "iran". The Bandcamp support engineer only speculated that this could be the cause. The user reports that they are able to use the Paypal account normally and they only get this error when attempting to pay Bandcamp however this may just be some special rules that Paypal implements when making payments to US companies from foreign accounts (it appears this user is in Uruguay).

aaomidi 6y ago
Nah these companies definitely block transactions based on these. How do I know? I'm Iranian and have experienced the wildest blocking systems. I was playing around with timezone once and set my timezone to tehran. My credit card company blocked my account and I couldn't get it back until i faxed a notarized form.