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To note, all of these work on PayPal, with a bank account. PayPal are a dick on fraudulent merchant account detection and it’s well know assets can be frozen o

To note, all of these work on PayPal, with a bank account. PayPal are a dick on fraudulent merchant account detection and it’s well know assets can be frozen on a whim, but at this point it’s the one of the few other options.

philip1209 4y ago
Lower fees matter most for low-margin businesses. If your business has 5% margins, then taking your payment processing fees from 3% to 1% is transformative for your profits. The reality is that most low-margin B2C businesses are brick and mortar service-based businesses, such as restaurants. And, therein lies the problem for Paypal and for crypto payments: The low-margin businesses that care about CC fees are not early-adopters of payment networks. Restaurants can't conceivably introduce a non-traditional payment network as their exclusive provider.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Yes. There is a huge divide between online and offline. For online your choice is to poney up the fee or not get paid at all. You’ll also probably target a wider audience and region restricted payment networks become less viable. Offline credit cards processing currently has super low fees, but it’s also a field where there is already way more competition than VISA/Mastercard, in particular there will be national card networks, and prepaid NFC that rise up as an alternative. > Restaurants can't conceivably introduce a non-traditional payment network as their exclusive provider. In my experience they do. They always have cash as the fallback, so they can pick and choose more freely than other businesses (think of all the restaurants that won’t accept anything other than cash)
  - philip1209 4y ago
    Yeah, but the danger is that cash-only businesses will have smaller check sizes, and at the end of the day that probably translates to less in alcohol sales. So, if sales decreases because of unfavorable payment methods (such as cash), then it's the high-margin item (alcohol) that probably gets affected most.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      If we’re pondering about how to run a restaurant, I think that’s a complicated and nuanced discussion that will have different ins and out depending on what restaurant, where, serving who. For instance a lot of lunch focused restaurants won’t serve much alcohol if at all. High volume low check size restaurants also abound. Do we also call cafes “restaurant” if they serve hot food at the table ? etc. A tourism oriented restaurant will go so far as to accept American Express and swallow the fees, while a local restaurant can refuse anything other than cash and the local prepaid card, it really varies a lot. PS: we might be missing context on if we’re only taking USA, as the article is about that, or on more global range, which I think is more interesting on the Visa/Mastercad discussion.
Zircom 4y ago
PayPal is a joke when it comes to addressing fraud, it's completely hit or miss on both sides. My younger brother got scammed out of like $100 trying to order a chair from a furniture website that turned out to be some guy in China scamming people. The "online store" only accepts Paypal and when checking out, instead of the usual PayPal process is directs you to a page that's already completely filled out to send the correct amount as a personal friends and family transaction. He realized something was up literally minutes after completing the transaction when he saw that the email confirmation listed a random Chinese email address and saw it sent as a friends and family transaction and immediately called PayPal support and they basically told him to get bent and refused to reverse the transaction, because they don't offer any guarantees or protection on personal transactions, completely refusing to address the fact that this guy is scamming people using their platform. He had to do a chargeback with his credit card company and got his money back that way, but of course PayPal banned his account in response.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  TBF, is there any way to do fraud protection on personal transfers ? Imagine you sent 100 bucks to your cousin and 10 min later requested your bank to get your money back because you sent it to the wrong cousin. I hate to say this, but there will always be loopholes as long as scamming js lucrative enough.
  - Zircom 4y ago
    >TBF, is there any way to do fraud protection on personal transfers ? Imagine you sent 100 bucks to your cousin and 10 min later requested your bank to get your money back because you sent it to the wrong cousin. When it's easily verifiable that actual fraud has taken place I would say yes. It would've taken them literally 5 minutes of their time to investigate by going to the website, seeing it presents itself as a retail furniture store, and to go through the checkout process and seeing that it ends up at a form for a personal transfer, and that no goods ever end up being delivered, all of which clearly indicate the transaction is 100% intended to be fraudulent by the supposed seller.

philip1209 4y ago

Lower fees matter most for low-margin businesses. If your business has 5% margins, then taking your payment processing fees from 3% to 1% is transformative for your profits. The reality is that most low-margin B2C businesses are brick and mortar service-based businesses, such as restaurants. And, therein lies the problem for Paypal and for crypto payments: The low-margin businesses that care about CC fees are not early-adopters of payment networks. Restaurants can't conceivably introduce a non-traditional payment network as their exclusive provider.

makeitdouble 4y ago
Yes. There is a huge divide between online and offline. For online your choice is to poney up the fee or not get paid at all. You’ll also probably target a wider audience and region restricted payment networks become less viable. Offline credit cards processing currently has super low fees, but it’s also a field where there is already way more competition than VISA/Mastercard, in particular there will be national card networks, and prepaid NFC that rise up as an alternative. > Restaurants can't conceivably introduce a non-traditional payment network as their exclusive provider. In my experience they do. They always have cash as the fallback, so they can pick and choose more freely than other businesses (think of all the restaurants that won’t accept anything other than cash)
- philip1209 4y ago
  Yeah, but the danger is that cash-only businesses will have smaller check sizes, and at the end of the day that probably translates to less in alcohol sales. So, if sales decreases because of unfavorable payment methods (such as cash), then it's the high-margin item (alcohol) that probably gets affected most.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    If we’re pondering about how to run a restaurant, I think that’s a complicated and nuanced discussion that will have different ins and out depending on what restaurant, where, serving who. For instance a lot of lunch focused restaurants won’t serve much alcohol if at all. High volume low check size restaurants also abound. Do we also call cafes “restaurant” if they serve hot food at the table ? etc. A tourism oriented restaurant will go so far as to accept American Express and swallow the fees, while a local restaurant can refuse anything other than cash and the local prepaid card, it really varies a lot. PS: we might be missing context on if we’re only taking USA, as the article is about that, or on more global range, which I think is more interesting on the Visa/Mastercad discussion.

Zircom 4y ago

PayPal is a joke when it comes to addressing fraud, it's completely hit or miss on both sides. My younger brother got scammed out of like $100 trying to order a chair from a furniture website that turned out to be some guy in China scamming people. The "online store" only accepts Paypal and when checking out, instead of the usual PayPal process is directs you to a page that's already completely filled out to send the correct amount as a personal friends and family transaction. He realized something was up literally minutes after completing the transaction when he saw that the email confirmation listed a random Chinese email address and saw it sent as a friends and family transaction and immediately called PayPal support and they basically told him to get bent and refused to reverse the transaction, because they don't offer any guarantees or protection on personal transactions, completely refusing to address the fact that this guy is scamming people using their platform. He had to do a chargeback with his credit card company and got his money back that way, but of course PayPal banned his account in response.

makeitdouble 4y ago
TBF, is there any way to do fraud protection on personal transfers ? Imagine you sent 100 bucks to your cousin and 10 min later requested your bank to get your money back because you sent it to the wrong cousin. I hate to say this, but there will always be loopholes as long as scamming js lucrative enough.
- Zircom 4y ago
  >TBF, is there any way to do fraud protection on personal transfers ? Imagine you sent 100 bucks to your cousin and 10 min later requested your bank to get your money back because you sent it to the wrong cousin. When it's easily verifiable that actual fraud has taken place I would say yes. It would've taken them literally 5 minutes of their time to investigate by going to the website, seeing it presents itself as a retail furniture store, and to go through the checkout process and seeing that it ends up at a form for a personal transfer, and that no goods ever end up being delivered, all of which clearly indicate the transaction is 100% intended to be fraudulent by the supposed seller.