4 ms·

Because in reality paypal is actually pretty awesome (note: I work for Etsy which uses paypal as a payment processor, so I guess I'm kind of biased). The cost

by wdewind 15y ago

Because in reality paypal is actually pretty awesome (note: I work for Etsy which uses paypal as a payment processor, so I guess I'm kind of biased). The cost for the business, compared to maintaining your own payments platform at scale, is pretty reasonable, and the failure rate is pretty miniscule when you consider the amount of potential fraud that goes through the platform. Paypal wasn't really designed to handle one off personal payments, it was designed to let small (and large) businesses accept payments, internationally and fraud free. This is ridiculously difficult (how many of you have ever written software that integrates with a bank? ugh.) PayPal does this exceptionally well and because of that many huge businesses are built on its back. The reality is, in most of the situations that people complain about freezing their money, without paypal their entire project would've been a no-go anyway. I do feel for people who legitimately have their accounts wrongly frozen (I am one of them, though mine was unfrozen after a few days), but you have to understand how small a percentage of people that is, and that you can't have a system without failure. Again, paypal's failure rate, when you consider what they actually do, is astoundingly low. Edit: Just for absolute clarity - I work for Etsy and have zero affiliation with the blog from the OP, and it has zero affiliation with Etsy. Also these are my opinions not my employers etc.

latchkey 15y ago
I wrote the software that integrates with WePay. They are a 'real' bank. Works great. ;-) https://github.com/lookfirst/WePay-Java-SDK https://github.com/lookfirst/WePay-Java-SDK
joshu 15y ago
IIRC Paypal was originally designed for interpersonal payments.
- wdewind 15y ago
  TBH you might be correct. I don't think that's what is currently optimized for, but even there, it still works pretty damn well. Haters gonna hate...
- sk5t 15y ago
  Right on, Paypal was designed exactly for Bob to send Sally $10.27 for yesterday's lunch tab, according to Paypal's own promotion and vision on day one. Letting businesses, charities, and other orgs use it as a payment processor came quite a bit later.
  - skore 15y ago
    I think it's safe to say that they, quite reasonably, figured out that the former is a risk-infested nightmare. Saying "hey, that actually cost $11, Bob!" is a minor thing in an interpersonal relationship, but when it has the potential to trigger a fraud investigation (think ex-girlfriend marking all 'casual' transactions as fraud after a breakup) you invite chaos. So yes, they switched on that, but it's really not hard to see why. I wouldn't want to use it for personal transactions. (In Germany, we mostly use bank wire transfers for that.)
- Lagged2Death 15y ago
  Well it was at least originally marketed as being for interpersonal payments, as a service that John Q. Public would want an account on for that purpose.
runako 15y ago
>> I do feel for people who legitimately have their accounts wrongly frozen (I am one of them, though mine was unfrozen after a few days) This is the heart of the issue. Based on anecdotal evidence, there is little to no transparency in the freezing/unfreezing of accounts. This makes PayPal a cash flow risk to any business that relies on it for funding. I wouldn't be comfortable if my employees' pay depended on cash flow coming in from PayPal unless I had other dependable sources of emergency cash flow that could be tapped for indefinite periods of time. It's good that your account was unfrozen after a few days, but what if you needed the money to pay your employees, so that they could pay their rents? Getting lucky with a short freeze is not a business strategy.
- wdewind 15y ago
  It's not that you are wrong, it's that this risk exists in every payment processor. Paypal anecdotally looks worse because it gets MUCH more press than other payment processors. A service that handles this better is a unicorn.

by wdewind 15y ago

latchkey 15y ago

I wrote the software that integrates with WePay. They are a 'real' bank. Works great. ;-) https://github.com/lookfirst/WePay-Java-SDK https://github.com/lookfirst/WePay-Java-SDK

joshu 15y ago

IIRC Paypal was originally designed for interpersonal payments.

wdewind 15y ago
TBH you might be correct. I don't think that's what is currently optimized for, but even there, it still works pretty damn well. Haters gonna hate...
sk5t 15y ago
Right on, Paypal was designed exactly for Bob to send Sally $10.27 for yesterday's lunch tab, according to Paypal's own promotion and vision on day one. Letting businesses, charities, and other orgs use it as a payment processor came quite a bit later.
- skore 15y ago
  I think it's safe to say that they, quite reasonably, figured out that the former is a risk-infested nightmare. Saying "hey, that actually cost $11, Bob!" is a minor thing in an interpersonal relationship, but when it has the potential to trigger a fraud investigation (think ex-girlfriend marking all 'casual' transactions as fraud after a breakup) you invite chaos. So yes, they switched on that, but it's really not hard to see why. I wouldn't want to use it for personal transactions. (In Germany, we mostly use bank wire transfers for that.)
Lagged2Death 15y ago
Well it was at least originally marketed as being for interpersonal payments, as a service that John Q. Public would want an account on for that purpose.

runako 15y ago

>> I do feel for people who legitimately have their accounts wrongly frozen (I am one of them, though mine was unfrozen after a few days) This is the heart of the issue. Based on anecdotal evidence, there is little to no transparency in the freezing/unfreezing of accounts. This makes PayPal a cash flow risk to any business that relies on it for funding. I wouldn't be comfortable if my employees' pay depended on cash flow coming in from PayPal unless I had other dependable sources of emergency cash flow that could be tapped for indefinite periods of time. It's good that your account was unfrozen after a few days, but what if you needed the money to pay your employees, so that they could pay their rents? Getting lucky with a short freeze is not a business strategy.

wdewind 15y ago
It's not that you are wrong, it's that this risk exists in every payment processor. Paypal anecdotally looks worse because it gets MUCH more press than other payment processors. A service that handles this better is a unicorn.