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PayPal launches crypto checkout service
- NicoJuicy 6y agoOn with the hype train. Just like in 2017 when they all announced crypto support and then it silently got removed ( square, steam, ... )
- seibelj 6y agoThere is literally nothing positive that can happen in crypto without the HN hate train arguing it’s meaningless / “just use mysql” / “am I the only one that thinks this?!?”
- ketamine__ 6y agoDo you know anyone that pays in crypto? I don't.
- StevePerkins 6y agoA few people that I work with order THC gummies from some sketchy source, delivered via mail, that they pay for with crypto. Pornhub still exists, despite having their credit card processing de-platformed, so I guess somebody is paying them some crypto. But no. I've never met anyone in real life who uses crypto for mundane transactions, where fiat currency is an option.
- madamelic 6y ago>A few people that I work with order THC gummies from some sketchy source I have heard from a friend that typically those 'sketchy sources' are just buying gummies from stores in legal states (cough California) and shipping them out. My friend would get the gummies in the bags ready for retail sale. Same with other items like vape pods.
- brotherofsteel 6y agoHi there. I regularly pay for things with Bitcoin Cash.
- ketamine__ 6y agoCraig Wright is a pathological liar.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoHe has nothing to do with bitcoin cash
- ketamine__ 6y agoExcept that he shilled it extensively...
- CyberDildonics 6y agoWho cares? He's a pathological liar.
- brotherofsteel 6y agoYou're absolutely right. I'm almost glad that BSV split off so BCH didn't have to be associated with him anymore.
- Geee 6y agoDo you know any people who use the Internet? I don't.
- ketamine__ 6y agoAlmost everyone I know uses the internet. What was the point of this stupid question?
- Roark66 6y agoI was actually paid in crypto for few days of some programming work once. I wish I held to it all rather than spending most of it. Personally I think the biggest issue with crypto now is, one that it promotes huge value inflation and Ponzi-like schemes (we are seeing it with BTC and ETH), two horrible energy use inefficiency. From a bitcoin transaction that requires orders of magnitude more energy to process than any other transfer of value known to humanity to Ethereum "virtual machine" for smart contracts that is most inefficient way to execute arbitrary code ever invented... I used to be a big proponent of crypto overall. I still have some holdings in it, but I can't unsee the idiocy in PoW crypto once I saw and understood it clearly. I wondered for a while what is so specific to crypto that it became today's tulips? (Rather than gold futures, stocks, real estate etc) and then I understood all those asset classes are already used like this. Every kind of asset that can will eventually be used in some kind of pyramid scheme. Just look at the price of gold compared to few years ago, real estate in many large cities, stocks etc. It was absolutely inevitable that crypto as it became a trusted store of value would become a vehicle for speculative bubbles/pyramid schemes. So then the question is, can crypto fulfill the role of a currency (requiring some level of value stability) and be a vehicle for speculative pyramids at the same time? I don't think so. Proof of Work is one problem with crypto that perhaps Proof of Stake will resolve. The other problem is much more fundamental. How do we create crypto that maintains stability without having to resort to typical "stable coin" strategies like holding other currencies and selling/buying them to artificially adjust the value. Is it possible to create crypto that would maintain its value in the long term in distributed - no central authority manner while discouraging pyramid investment schemes. And finally, once someone invents such crypto would anyone actually hear about it as most promotion of crypto seems to be done by people who got in early and hope for their holdings to increase in value.
- boc 6y agoAgreed. It's the difference between deflationary assets and inflationary currency. Bitcoin's core, fundamental problem is that it's deflationary. Therefore it will never be useful for economic transactions, because any society which fully commits to bitcoin as their currency will have their economy grind to a halt. Why would I buy a new car today when it's going to be cheaper tomorrow? There's a reason why the Fed targets a ~2% inflation rate for the USD.
- bluecalm 6y agoI am as much a crypto skeptic as you can find but even I know people who could only pay in crypto and I lost business by not being able to accept it. The financial regulations around the world are often very strict. A lot of people need to go around them. Sure, a lot of them are drug dealers, gambling operators etc. but there are also people in China struggling with capital control regulations as one example.
- NicoJuicy 6y agoIt's not hate. I don't want to pay 22$ for a 1$ product with bitcoin, when it gets popular. I'm also not going to put my money in a joke coin like dogecoin. I like the blockchain, but crypto is just an implementation of it and without a use-case currently ( blockchain has multiple use-cases though). Instead of trying to go on the emotional side with "hate-train"? Try to convince me with facts. Ps. I owned crypto until 2017 and then sold it then, because i didn't see a valid use-case ( and 20 k was high enough for me)
- rawtxapp 6y ago> Ps. I owned crypto until 2017 and then sold it because i didn't see a valid use-case. Do you think maybe you have some biases against it now, because it would have made you a lot of money if you held on to it? Nobody is paying 22$ for a 1$ product, I'm not sure how you can even remotely come to that while ignoring all the layer 2 developments. There's a ton of really useful projects happening on DeFi, you can see the blockchain data for yourself and see that a lot of people are using it, maybe you don't see the use case, but that doesn't mean there isn't any.
- NicoJuicy 6y agoI actually made a lot of money with it. So I don't think I'm biased because of that. It dropped to 4k afterwards ( I could have purchased again, but if something falls from my watchlist, i don't care about it anymore). What is probably biasing me, is that I had a digital magazine and the #1 hit was for "how to recover Bitcoin password". Which also leads me to my conclusion: "There's currently no replacement for a official and trusted centralized authority in Crypto".
- tomiplaz 6y agoI presume you are not familiar with the Lightning Network? I suggest reading https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook
- NicoJuicy 6y agoYes I am, but not in specifics. It's already been mentioned since 2017... Fee's are still high. Crypto still can't handle a lot of traffic as far as i'm aware today.
- weego 6y agoLet's see what they peg their exchange rate to
- nimbius 6y agoor just, you know...pay the vendor directly. capitalism cannot abide a market that exists unexploited it seels. traditional rent-seeking high fee payment processing services are going to inject themselves into cryptocurrency at all cost. At this point the efforts is getting a little comical.
- throwaway10110 6y agoBusinesses might want to be settled in the currency of their home country for ease of accounting/taxes and not be subjected to high volatility
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago> and not be subjected to high volatility So they choose bitcoin?
- mcintyre1994 6y ago> PayPal hopes its service can change that, as by settling the transaction in fiat currency, merchants will not take on the volatility risk/upside. The whole point is that PayPal shields the business from the volatility risk. Buyer buys in Bitcoin, seller receives local fiat currency.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoAh, I read that as the opposite way around - wanting to avoid their own currency because of volatility. My bad.
- EveYoung 6y agoThose companies only want to offer BTC as a payment option but don't want to hold crypto themselves. So they didn't really choose BTC to start with. Which makes sense since most companies need to pay their costs in fiat money.
- throwaway10110 6y agoThis basically kills BitPay who recently made all transactions (of any value) in crypto require KYC registration.
- brotherofsteel 6y agoWhat PayPal is offering is not even close to what BitPay is doing. On PayPal you will only be able to use cryptocurrency that you bought from PayPal, you cannot transfer cryptocurrency in or out of your account. All you can do is buy cryptocurrency from PayPal and then sell it back to them at a later time.
- throwaway10110 6y agoI see, wow, then this sucks
- ajkdhcb2 6y agoIt killed itself. I stopped using several services because they want me to send fucking passport info to make a $10 transaction, so unsafe.
- pingec 6y agoAre there any alternatives to bitpay?
- space_rock 6y ago* Bitcoin merchant payments * Fiat conversion options https://www.coinpayments.net/ https://www.coinpayments.net/
- jypepin 6y agoI never used bitpay but I don't think it's their fault to have to request passport verification. As a money transmitter they are required to answer to KYC rules, which includes passport or other docs verification to ensure you are who you are. If you are wondering why Paypal never asked for your passport, it's probably because you eventually linked Paypal to another KYC-compatible entity, such as your bank (by linking your bank, sending money with your credit card, etc). I assume in the case of bitpay you would only link your btc wallet which in itself doesn't offer KYC verifications.
- hahahahe 6y ago@ what fees? and why? Perhaps Paypal should focus on hiring more customer service agents instead of going a full year without a direct line in the US? Paypal is one of the most egregious fintech companies in existence.
- cube00 6y ago> The company will charge no transaction fee to checkout with crypto Will this be like what they do when they offer "no transaction fee" currency conversion but build it into the rate they use?
- zozin 6y agoObviously. Intermediators love volatility and big spreads! Users will probably lose a few percentage points on every transaction, so for PayPal this is basically a license to print money.
- deweller 6y agoCan I actually send bitcoin to an address to pay? Or is this only paying with my PayPal crypto balance - which has no blockchain deposit or withdrawal capability?
- StavrosK 6y agoProbably the latter, given the article. It just auto-exchanges to fiat (knowing PayPal, for a big fee) so you can pay at PayPal-accepting vendors.
- pingec 6y agoCan I transfer Cryptocurrency into and out of PayPal? Currently, you can only hold the Cryptocurrency that you buy on PayPal in your account. Additionally, the Cryptocurrency in your account cannot be transferred to other accounts on or off PayPal. https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/cryptocurrency-on-paypal-faq-faq4398 https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/cryptocurrency-o...
- Helloworldboy 6y agoI love reading about crypto on HN because everyone here knew about it early enough to be a multimillionaire but thought they were too smart for it. The salt in these threads is amazing
- christiansakai 6y agoPaypal/Visa/Mastercard doing rent seeking again. Sign of old guards trying to be relevant.
- rawtxapp 6y agoThey probably don't want to get their lunch eaten like news publishers that didn't pay attention to the internet.
- XorNot 6y agoOr it's a move to satisfy investors who want to know that they've "got a strategy for crypto". The market of crypto being used to buy things is incredibly small.
- Geee 6y agoActually they are pretty relevant, because they can provide merchant protection, currency exchange, scalability and privacy to cryptocurrencies. You don't need to use them, but they're useful to many.
- krageon 6y ago> merchant protection None of the listed agencies do this in practice. > privacy Now I'm starting to believe you may actually be joking. Is that the case?
- Geee 6y agoNot the best privacy obviously. However, they hide transactions from third parties.
- Dirlewanger 6y agoUh, why do you think after signing up for one credit card, you magically start getting offers for other cards? CC companies have been selling transaction data for decades before FAANG made it trendy to do so.
- brotherofsteel 6y agoNo, they didn't. They launched a service where you can buy certain cryptocurrencies from PayPal and then sell it back to them at a later time, which may happen to be at the same time as you are paying a merchant fiat money. You can't even transfer your cryptocurrency to or from PayPal.
- dwringer 6y agoIt's been possible to buy and sell cryptocurrencies in one's PayPal account for months (including right before buying something with the resulting balance in fiat currency); what seems to be new here is that one can have PayPal handle the conversion at checkout without first having to click "sell" or paying added transaction fees (simply selling would incur a hefty 1 or 2% based on the amount sold). It is true that one cannot transfer cryptocurrency holdings into or out of PayPal.
- TacoToni 6y agoI wonder if they will allow transfers in the future.
- tootahe45 6y agoTransfers in and out would cause huge source-of-funds type compliance issues and fraud problems, as well as support tickets from users setting the wrong fees and getting scammed. They would've bought something like Bitpay long ago if people cared to transact in crypto. The reality is 99% are happy just to store it on paypal,coinbase, etc and be charged exorbitant fees and hope the price goes up.
- spurdoman77 6y agoThe source-of-funds problem is solvable, otherwise companies like coinbase wouldnt be allowed to exist. Paypal just needs to buy some chain analysis service, and implement SARs and other related AML stuff.
- tootahe45 6y ago
- cstever 6y agoWith "big" companies coming in on the Crypto bandwagon is Crypto really worth anything? I don't understand (and maybe someone can explain it to me) how Crypto is for "the little guy" when those who started out at the beginning have "all" the crypto already. There is no way I am going to be able to "mine" more crypto than those who started years before me or those who have more "traditional" money than me currently to buy crypto. It's still money. It's still a bond, a promissory note; it's not real and is only worth what the big guys (whether traditional or crytpo big guys) say it is worth. But I am no economist or financial expert. So why should I use crypto? I'm still at the bottom in that game.
- XorNot 6y agoThis is what people are talking about when they note the problems of deflationary currency.
- reedf1 6y agoIt allows you to be your own bank - you aren't depending on any central authority to allow you access to your "cash". This might be one of those things that is Not For You if you can't think of a use for it, and that is Okay.
- uberswe 6y agoSo the difference is that there is no central authority that can just print more crypto. It's decentralised which means you don't need a bank, bank card or ATMs, you can store your crypto on a piece of paper. So the big guys can own a lot of crypto or a lot of dollars, with crypto there are no banks for them to control and no government to print out new notes.
- chii 6y agoBut looking at this paypal payment, you cannot use your own crypto from your own stick, but have to first sell that crypto to USD, transfer that USD to paypal, then purchase crypto back in paypal, in order to spend it.
- throwawayzRUU6f 6y ago
- cybert00th 6y agoUgh PayPal, haven't used them in ages, avoid them whenever I can - nowadays they're good for one off donations and that's about it. They take a fee here and a fee there, and before you know it they've helped themselves to 4% of the takings. Sigh, and then there's the seemingly endless nagging about verifying extra users
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bluecalm 6y agoIt's more like 6%. Standard 2.9+% for transactions and then forced 2.9+% for currency conversion unless you're lucky and you accept transactions in your local currency.
- analog31 6y agoLike any other business service, PP works for some businesses and maybe not for others. I'm in the category of a small home business making a hardware product that only ships within the US. PayPal has got me covered. They have the customer protections that people seem to like when dealing with a nearly unknown business. They let me run my business from a passive web page and an e-mail address. They offer USPS first class mail as a shipping option, which saves me a lot of money on shipping. The USPS website forces you to use priority mail. Would I pay less for the same service? Sure. Am I aware of the horror stories? You bet. Do I explore other services? Yes. On the other hand, a purely digital business that already has a website, and is moving stuff internationally? Maybe there are better options.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoPayPal has some weird priorities, their existing checkout doesn't support CSP and the bug issue remains open for over a year without proper official updates on whether it will ever be fixed. [1] https://github.com/paypal/paypal-checkout-components/issues/1248 https://github.com/paypal/paypal-checkout-components/issues/...
- mamon 6y agoI'm not even sure what the use case for PayPal is - what can it do that Visa or MasterCard cannot?
- Cypher 6y agobearish... why sell the crypto
- buildbuildbuild 6y agoThis is not a BitPay competitor until PayPal allows users to deposit cryptocurrency. Until then it is a closed loop system, users and merchants cannot yet deposit or withdraw crypto itself, similar to Robinhood. Highly disappointed that Square (Cash) has not launched a BitPay competitor and still only supports Bitcoin. They’ve allowed BTC deposits and withdrawals for years (with great UX!) yet are lagging far behind in release cadence. The biggest barrier to spending crypto is still finding merchants that accept it, even through third parties. PayPal’s huge merchant userbase will allow dominance if/when they flip the switch to an open loop, “deposit your crypto” approach. Only PayPal and Stripe can flip that switch at scale with a hosted checkout experience. Merchants don’t care how a user paid, they want fiat.
- d--b 6y agoIf paypal allows people to deposit their crypto and pay merchants in fiat, you can be sure that they’ll quickly become the biggest seller of bitcoin out there. With the illiquidity of the btc => usd conversion, they’ll have to pay the merchant before selling the btc, which means they’ll have to take a huge margin to cover potential slippage. No one wants to be the guy who sells bitcoin on a massive scale.
- miohtama 6y agoPayPal also does not need to hold the underlying assets. They can buy Bitcoin derivates instead of spot Bitcoin to maintain the reserves. Not sure if they are doing this, though, but it could be more capital efficient.
- d--b 6y agoAt some point someone needs to sell the spot though...
- ajkdhcb2 6y agoThere are always debit cards that let you 'spend' crypto, paypal is obviously less useful than that. The volume would also be nowhere near big exchangers since trading is by far the biggest activity in crypto
- bitcoinmonger 6y agoHow does this affect the environment?
- uncletammy 6y agoObvious troll is obvious
- dgellow 6y agoJust in case some of you try the service: don't forget to consider capital gain tax in addition to PayPal fees/conversion rate.
- johnnymonster 6y agoExactly my reservation with using something like this! the US still classifies virtual currency as Property NOT currency! This is a HUGE problem when trying to use crypto to buy things where there will be a paper trail that the US govt can get ahold of it.
- freeone3000 6y agoThey can also just check your PayPal account balance. And your blockchain. Every transaction using Bitcoin is public.
- lottin 6y agoI guess PayPal will provide a tax report? Otherwise could be a nightmare.
- xiphias2 6y agoIn US I can imagine that the exported transactions can be imported to a software that understands Bitcoin taxation. But outside US? It's a crazy world....I rather stay with big buys/sells/borrows until taxation is resolved.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ajkdhcb2 6y agoWhat's the point if you cant even deposit crypto to paypal? Does the crypto ever even exist?
- Trias11 6y agoPositive for crypto in general. However judging by PayPal track record and scary stories of arbitrarily freezing accounts I’d advice all my friends to keep their cryptos away from PayPal hands or any of their services. Not your keys - not your coins
- Trias11 6y ago“ The company will charge no transaction fee to checkout with crypto and only one type of coin can be used for each purchase, it said...” PayPal will likely compensate “no transaction fee” with draconian exchange rate or bid/ask spread.
- tfang17 6y agoPayPal did a complete 180 from their stance on crypto just 2 years ago. I worked at Coinbase on the Payments team ~2018. Working to integrate PayPal was a nightmare - so much opposition to the integration from PayPal execs and compliance team. Even when we did manage to finally integrate, PayPal was only enabled for crypto sells. Change in direction at PayPal must have come straight from the top.
- anddddd1 6y agoThey saw the light. Surprised so many commenters here still don't see it. In the words of the late great Steve Jobs: "are you getting it yet!??"
- randomopining 6y agoWhat did they see beyond realizing they could sell the shovels and collect fees?
- nyolfen 6y agothat they are going to be left in the dust if they don't adapt
- boc 6y agoNobody is going to be left in the dust. There's zero chance the global market moves to bitcoin, and there's zero chance that you'll ever live in a country where it's the primary form of currency. Everyone who thinks that bitcoin is the future needs to really wrap their head around why a $20 bill buys a nice meal instead of buying you whatever a small scrap of cotton paper with fancy ink on it is worth.
- randomopining 6y agoI agree, but it could be good as a deflationary reserve asset, no?
- tsjq 6y agoRay Dalio says US likely to ban crypto soon. OTOH, PayPal adding support to crypto, Visa adding support to crypto. Are these being accelerated by Wall St / hedge fund types who stand to lose many Billions of US bans crypto
- backtoyoujim 6y agoI do not want to pay federal taxes on every purchase I make. Paypal's service won't change that.
- srockets 6y agoNo, for that you'll have to move to the Caymans.
- CynicusRex 6y agoPayPal launches pyramid scheme checkout service.
- tppiotrowski 6y agoI wonder what the dispute resolution mechanism will look like. "Item not received" and "Unauthorised Transaction" complaints by users are the ones mentioned by Paypal Seller Protection [1]. [1] https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/security/seller-protection https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/security/seller-protec...
- sschueller 6y agoImagine if PayPal was handling your cash transaction when your are at a store instead of you paying the store directly. We don't need PayPal or Visa to pay with crypto. These are desperate attempts for these middleman to keep the control they have. In fact this way they can make the crypto experience worse than regular payments with hight fees etc. Pushing people away and thinking crypto doesn't work.
- tartoran 6y agoI feel in this case they feel that they'd soon become irrelevant if they don't handle crypto. But as a customer I'd rather use fiat for day to day bills and replenish that fiat account whenever I want from crypto - with low fees, security and ease of access.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoYes. Full agreement here. That said, for better or worse, Paypal's move effectively makes crypto into currency. Up until now, it was not exactly a mainstream option.
- yalogin 6y agoWho pays at stores with PayPal? Is that a thing?
- frankbreetz 6y agoThey have a credit/debit card, so if you wanted to keep only cyrpto seems like an okay option
- awad 6y agoI've seen them integrated into POS systems and I've also paid in-store via their app once or twice (after a promotional offer). However, they also own Venmo, and Pay with Venmo to a business is something they're actively pushing.
- frankbreetz 6y agoWith this news and the Visa news yesterday Bitcoin still is not at the ath. It seems mostly a very small group of people are driving this bull cycle, Namely Musk(I am assuming he has some influance over PayPal ), Saylor, Dorsey, but somehow that equals "institutional investment". Everyone else involved seems to be more selling "shovels and picks".
- loceng 6y agoOr it's the investment firms/partners that still have BoD sway or influence over?
- frankbreetz 6y agoWhat is BoD?
- loceng 6y agoBoard of Directors
- intotheabyss 6y agoThe Visa news was not relevant to Bitcoin, as the news is about Visa settling payments using USDC on Ethereum.