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Today I learned that random people can send you money on PayPal and disputed it
- Dah00n 3y agoFor the life of me I cannot understand anyone would use PayPal. I'd rather trust the postal system with an envelope of money. I have yet to see an area where there aren't better options.
- neom 3y agoI've used paypal frequently for 15 years and never had a single issue at all.
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- seanhunter 3y agoAt the moment I use paypal when my bank rejects a credit card transaction due to fraud risk. For example this happened yesterday when I tried to make a payment to a (very reputable) educational institution for an application fee. This is by no means a high risk transaction. In fact I would go so far as to say the payment could never in a million, billion, Brazillian years be fraud, but it was rejected. But they take paypal also, so no bother. Do the transaction on paypal. This kind of thing happens maybe once every couple of months for me, and is why I keep paypal around. Edit to add: I think some UK banks are much more trigger-happy than the global average when it comes to flagging transactions as possible fraud. I once had to pay my tax bill (to the UK government) by paypal because the debit card transaction was declined.
- tamimio 3y ago>rejects a credit card transaction due to fraud risk This actually happened to me yesterday, thing is, the merchant doesn’t use paypal or anything except card, so kind of suck it up :/
- zimpenfish 3y ago> I think some UK banks are much more trigger-happy than the global average For a good year, Barclays would ask me if my monthly Oyster purchase, for the same cost, at the same station, on roughly the same day of the month, was actually me doing it. Natwest, similarly, have blocked my "early September, about £1200, to Apple" payment for 5 years in a row now. It's infuriating.
- seanhunter 3y agoYeah. It's completely nuts. Especially when you consider how little of the actual fraud they seem to manage to stop. It's like someone needs to go in there and give them a stats 101 talk about type I and type II errors, because they somehow manage to defy all the rules of logic and have extremely high rates of both.
- fmajid 3y agoThe real travesty is that the credit card companies have had over 25 years to standardize a secure payment system and get it into browsers, yet have still failed to do so which is why we have fraud detection heuristics and their associated false positives. SET was launched in 1996, for crying out loud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Electronic_Transaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Electronic_Transaction
- martin8412 3y agoYour own link mentions the technology(3D secure), but all cards issued in the EU have mandatory 2FA for online payments in the form of 3D Secure. I usually have to verify in an app. This results in very little fraud. Additionally there's the Payment Requests API from W3C which is compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
- martin8412 3y agoI've had payments rejected when Revolut thought the payment was fraudulent, but I just get a notification in the app asking if it was me. If I click yes, I just do the payment again and it goes through. Had it happen recently in the US when paying for a hotel room. They immediately froze the card when it was swiped through the machine by hotel staff. Clicked yes in the app, and it went through.
- addandsubtract 3y agoPaypal is useful, because it transfers money instantly. Sending money in an envelope isn't an option when you want something instantly. As a buyer, it also offers a form of protection from fraudulent sellers, which you also don't have with the postal service.
- Dah00n 3y agoI can do that with other services too without risking PayPal though. If it is national transfers I can both use a national payment app or even a bank transfer - both instant transfer. PayPal might give some protection but it also freezes some accounts and keep the money. No other service I have heard of have as bad a reputation.
- hexfish 3y ago10-15 years ago (when I started using paypal) most Europeans didn't have a credit card and most US-based services (and things like Ebay and Dealextreme) didn't accept anything but credit cards and paypal. And this sometimes is still the case.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoAlmost nobody in Europe uses credit cards. We use debit cards, various types (immediate, deferred, ...). It was also the case 10-15 years ago. The usage has became much higher, but it was already all right by then. Except Germany, for cultural reasons.
- FartyMcFarter 3y agoPlenty of people have credit cards in Europe. In 11 countries, the majority of people do, in fact: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/people_with_credit_cards/Europe/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/people_with_credit...
- freetanga 3y agoA same-bank-as-your-cash-account credit card set up for full payment at the end of the month, so there is no financing. Technically a CC, feels like a DC. Thats my experience in EU a I worked in Banking in many countries .
- utucuro 3y agoMy reason for getting a credit card as soon as possible when I moved to Germany, was being able to switch the country of residence of some of my services to Germany, because they only accepted a local credit card as proof of residence here. Google was the main culprit in this regard. Mind you, the credit card itself is a serious joke - it's designed to be useless as far as I'm concerned. You cannot change the billing date, the app doesn't even show you the cutoff date. You cannot change the pin at all - if you request a new pin, they send you a new card. The only good way I've found to use the card is through Paypal, ironically. At least this way I can see, down to the minute, what I spent and where, which the bank is unable or unwilling to show me.
- SCdF 3y agoIt depends on what you mean by "use PayPal". To give out my debit card details as infrequently as possible, if a business supports paying with paypal I'll use them as the payment provider. I don't store any money with them though.
- isaacremuant 3y agoDisposable/virtual cards are a great alternative to that if you have a good banking system that provides them (e.g.: Revolut in Europe)
- prmoustache 3y agoYou usually don't need a paypal account for that though. Having said that, it can bite you in different way. Paypal keep an association of last email used in a transaction with a card number. For example, I had paid for a vps hosting using paypal payment (without a patpal account) with one card, using my email address in the billing details. Later one we bought something for my partner with the same card, but using her email address in the billing details. Subsequent payments notifications for my vps hosting were sent to her email address.
- GuB-42 3y agoPayPal is excellent for sending money (buying) for the same reason it is terrible for receiving money (selling). Essentially, the buyer is always right, and so, as a buyer, it is very easy to get your money back in case of a problem. The seller is the one who gets all the fees, and needs to justify himself if there is a dispute. Sellers offer PayPal because even though it is really bad for them, it gets them customers.
- ForestCritter 3y agoThey also have the best fee rates of payment processors for small businesses and craft show/ event venues. There is no cost unless you sell too.
- domh 3y agoI use PayPal for when I'm buying stuff from websites that I use very infrequently. I "trust" (in the lightest possible sense) PayPal more than a random website with my card details. Making it go through PayPal seems safer?
- astrange 3y agoDespite being the only person who's ever owned my email address, someone else somehow has it added to their PayPal account. Last I checked, Google's survey app inexplicably pays out to PayPal even though they have Google Wallet, and doubly inexplicably will only pay to what it thinks your email address is with no option to change it. So… someone in Brazil has my survey payments.
- addandsubtract 3y agoUmm... just do a password reset on their PayPal account?
- killingtime74 3y agoDon't do any more surveys?
- gopher167 3y agoUPI allows sending money using phone number only in India. It is at much bigger scale than Paypal. Over last 6 six years not even once sent me free money.
- danShumway 3y agoI know that FedNow isn't really a digital currency system and I'm not making any assumptions about how it's going to play out, but I hope one consequence of it is that sites like Paypal start seeing a lot more competition and lose a lot of power. I know other countries have similar systems, but the US being a holdout and having terrible money transfer options despite being a massive market in the tech space maybe (hopefully?) is the reason that hasn't already happened? I don't feel like I know enough to make any predictions, I'm just hopeful.
- arcticbull 3y agoThe dollar is already a digital currency, and its issuance is largely decentralized. Most dollars are issued by retail banks. What you can't do is self-custody the digital dollars or have an account at the Fed. FedNow is going to be fine, just like ACH but faster. PayPal sucks in a lot of ways, but there are reasons you would use it over an actual money sending service like Zelle, FedNow or Wise. For what it's worth it's pretty rare that I have been materially adversely affected by the latency of an ACH payment. That's not to say I don't welcome FedNow with open arms, though, I very much do.
- devoutsalsa 3y agoHow do retail banks issue dollars?
- WesternWind 3y agoloans basically, I think?A deposits $100 you loan $97 of it to B who deposits that in their account. But A still has their $100.
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- arcticbull 3y agoYes, also dollar creation outside of the jurisdiction of the Fed, like the Eurodollar market. These are US dollar denominated deposits in foreign countries at banks that don't have Fed accounts and can't even settle via Fedwire (instead relying on CHIPS). The repo market is another example - and derivatives markets. The main job of the Fed is be a clearinghouse. They don't really even know how much money is out there, let alone have omnipotent control over the supply. Monetary policy is only possible because of their role as a clearinghouse, but I digress.
- paypal_woes 3y agoHa, I was just wondering about this, or rather, whether there was any way to disable receiving funds. Not that I could find, anyway. I also coincidentally am having a spat with Paypal at the moment, hence my new username.
- okeuro49 3y agoThe title should be and "dispute" it
- eimrine 3y agoThe concept of trusted third party becomes more and more annoying.
- smcl 3y agoI don't get the angle of the "random people" here - is it just to cause a nuisance by causing target accounts to incur fees? I mean it's stupid but a lot of PayPal stuff is stupid. > To a point, I am suspecting Paypal pretends to be the random online stranger that sent me the money and then disputed it I would highly doubt this.
- seszett 3y ago> is it just to cause a nuisance by causing target accounts to incur fees? Most likely, they give money to a random email address using a stolen card, then dispute it and receive that money back, but now it's clean money because it comes from Paypal.
- smcl 3y agoI suppose, I'm not sure how far these cases get pursued but it feels like you could track the movement of money between a stolen card and the scammer's account if you really wanted. But maybe they give up after seeing a charge to PayPal
- seszett 3y agoIt could work within one country, but I suspect they would use stolen US credit cards to get funds on Paypal, but then transfer that money to a bank account in another country where Paypal is unlikely to be able to get it back. So the owner of the credit card should get their money back from their bank (or credit card company? Not sure how that works in the US) which might get their money back from Paypal if they want to bother, but it's probably too difficult for Paypal to get their money back from some bank in a country where they might not even have physical presence.
- smcl 3y agoAhhhh yeah that makes sense
- NorwegianDude 3y agoPayPal is the pinnacle of stupidity. I've sold the same digital product many thousand times, and this has happened multiple times: Some customers decides to try to get it for free by paying and then creating a PayPal claim by lying that someone else made the purchases or that it was not delivered. And this usually works, and people tell others, so more people abuse it. Basically every single time someone tries to commit "friendly fraud" as the card networks calls and it(customer tries to scam seller by lying), there are a handful of transactions from one person. PayPal usually rules 90 % of the cases in favor of the buyer. However, there can be 20 purchases during just a couple of hours from one person and card, and somehow PayPal is certain that purchase 6 and 10 was legit, while the rest was someone who used the card without permission. That seems probable, right? Even on a account with a flawless record for over 10 years I've had this happen so many times. Usually when this happens I have to spend hours on this and contact PayPal by phone to get the money back. Usually the customer gets the money too, for some absurd reason. PayPal's fraud system is absolutely garbage, and so is the standard email support. Contacting account managers at least gives you what seems to be a human response. I too got my PayPal account limited in 2012 as a result of a scammer who abused PayPal disputes. The solution is super simple: make buyers pay to create PayPal claims and use the money to have real people quickly look over the cases. This is similar to how cases are handled for card networks. Was the claim legit? Money back, including the claim fee. The merchant has to pay a fee, same way as today. Was the claim not legit? Basically free money for PayPal, and some should probably be shared with the merchant for helping out with solving the fake claim. At least in europe the scams on PayPal has mostly shifted from "unauthorized use" to "not delivered" as a result of strong consumer authentication.
- Pamar 3y agoThis is super interesting to me. I am an amateur artist and I publish my stuff on instagram (@pamar). In the last year I had multiple cases of people contacting me out of the blue and asking if I could draw a picture of their nephew's favourite dog (it is always a dog, and it is always for their nephew whose birthday is coming soon so there is an implicit sense of urgency). I never actually pursued this stuff because it was obviously a scam of some kind (I draw mostly nudes, dogs or animals in general amount to less than 1% of my production so far, so someone starting their message with "I just adore your style can you please draw a dog for me..." is obviously either a scammer or blind). Another clear sign is that they are obviously following a script (my standard answer is something alongside the lines of "Gee, thanks, but I do not really work on commissions, and I don't draw animals anyway" to which they would infallibly answer "Fantastic, would 2500USD be ok for you?" - at this point I just block them). But I am still a bit confused about what the angle would be for this type of scams: assuming they send me 100$ and then open a claim against me because I did not deliver... at most they would get 100$ back after a few days. There is no actual profit, right? (I am considering one of my drawings basically worthless, I draw on paper, usually a5 or smaller). Is this a laundering schema? What would they get out of it? (There are also lots of people asking to buy my stuff for NFT, I did not fall for that, either, but some other artist on IG explained to me that usually they ask you to create an account on some third party site... the account requires a fee, and after you have paid for it the NFT guy will just disappear - so in that case the way they get money from you is clear... but I still don't get how it would work in case of a physical item). Any clues?
- falsandtru 3y agoIn Japan, illegal money transfers for criminal purposes to personal bank accounts have also become a social problem. https://togetter.com/li/2172555 https://togetter.com/li/2172555 https://togetter.com/li/2015918 https://togetter.com/li/2015918
- jdthedisciple 3y agoLook how quickly the PayPal Support AI got there to respond.
- joker_minmax 3y agoCan't you reject funds the same way you're allowed to reject a request for funds? Is there something I'm missing?