6 ms·

New dark pattern just dropped – PayPal payments goes through immediately

22 points by Racing0461 3y ago

Paypal payments goes through immediately and the redirect page is just the "order successful" page instead of the way it used to be (even a couple months ago) where paypal would just authorize the payment and on the redirect back to the website would be the "submit order" or "complete order" button to finish.

chrisjj 3y ago
Whether that is dark depends entirely on what the merchant site shows before the handover to PayPal. If it shows e.g. "Pay now", then there is nothing dark here.
- Racing0461 3y ago
  websites that it previously worked as a prepay then confirm option just switched over to the immediate mode version.
arcanemachiner 3y ago
I have encountered this behavior for along time, on probably most of the sites on which I have used PayPal. It's annoying, but it's not new. Perhaps the service you are using messed up their implementation somewhere. It is a bit of a dark pattern since it's one less opportunity for you to back out, but I don't think PayPal is to blame.
- Racing0461 3y ago
  Yeah i guess the dark pattern was the changing of the behavior in the middle with no way to back out compared to starting like this from the beginning. The service i'm using is home depot, walgreens and the like that switched to this recently. i doubt it was an error. more likly some pm somewhere wanted to "reduce purchase friction".
happymellon 3y ago
Thos is interesting to me, as I haven't used PayPal for at least a decade. What would the scenario be where you would use PayPal rather than just purchasing something? I remember in the 2000's we had to use PayPal because of eBay but since that hasn't been a thing for a long time I not sure why anyone would use it. I can only assume that the US has a slightly different rule with regards to their banking that means that some people can't use their card to make a payment? Or do you have merchants that only accept payments via PayPal?
- dpig_ 3y ago
  BNPL with PayPal in 4 is one reason. Another reason might be encapsulating your payment info?
  - happymellon 3y ago
    > BNPL with PayPal in 4 TIL PayPal offered a BNPL option, although it is apparently 3 rather than 4 here. > Another reason might be encapsulating your payment info? Do CNP transactions not require you to authorise via a second factor in the US? I know that if I buy anything online any debit or credit card would require me to access the bank app to authenticate the transaction to prevent fraud. Encapsulation would reduce the security since I'm relying on PayPal to do this, at best they would match the existing bank verification.
    - zinekeller 3y ago
      > Do CNP transactions not require you to authorise via a second factor in the US? Do we even need to ask this question when cards there are still using signature-only verification (or even sometimes not even asking for signature nor PIN)? In all seriousness, they're dragging their feet in implementing 3DS2, do not have a rule like PSD2, and from time to time will even accept cards with nearly everything wrong except for card number and expiration. Even Stripe literally has an article titled "Charge succeeded despite CVC or ZIP check mismatch" (https://support.stripe.com/questions/charge-succeeded-despite-cvc-or-zip-check-mismatch https://support.stripe.com/questions/charge-succeeded-despit...) for merchants in other countries because that's how lax US banks are.
      - happymellon 3y ago
        That's insane. Although last time I was in the US I was told by stores that they didn't support contactless payments. I tapped anyway and it went through, after they tried to grab my card out of my hand to swipe it. Yeah, that's not going to work. Swiping is disabled except on a case by case basis, and grabbing my card out of my hard isn't going to get my custom.

22 points by Racing0461 3y ago

chrisjj 3y ago

Whether that is dark depends entirely on what the merchant site shows before the handover to PayPal. If it shows e.g. "Pay now", then there is nothing dark here.

Racing0461 3y ago
websites that it previously worked as a prepay then confirm option just switched over to the immediate mode version.

arcanemachiner 3y ago

I have encountered this behavior for along time, on probably most of the sites on which I have used PayPal. It's annoying, but it's not new. Perhaps the service you are using messed up their implementation somewhere. It is a bit of a dark pattern since it's one less opportunity for you to back out, but I don't think PayPal is to blame.

Racing0461 3y ago
Yeah i guess the dark pattern was the changing of the behavior in the middle with no way to back out compared to starting like this from the beginning. The service i'm using is home depot, walgreens and the like that switched to this recently. i doubt it was an error. more likly some pm somewhere wanted to "reduce purchase friction".

happymellon 3y ago

Thos is interesting to me, as I haven't used PayPal for at least a decade. What would the scenario be where you would use PayPal rather than just purchasing something? I remember in the 2000's we had to use PayPal because of eBay but since that hasn't been a thing for a long time I not sure why anyone would use it. I can only assume that the US has a slightly different rule with regards to their banking that means that some people can't use their card to make a payment? Or do you have merchants that only accept payments via PayPal?

dpig_ 3y ago
BNPL with PayPal in 4 is one reason. Another reason might be encapsulating your payment info?
- happymellon 3y ago
  > BNPL with PayPal in 4 TIL PayPal offered a BNPL option, although it is apparently 3 rather than 4 here. > Another reason might be encapsulating your payment info? Do CNP transactions not require you to authorise via a second factor in the US? I know that if I buy anything online any debit or credit card would require me to access the bank app to authenticate the transaction to prevent fraud. Encapsulation would reduce the security since I'm relying on PayPal to do this, at best they would match the existing bank verification.
  - zinekeller 3y ago
    > Do CNP transactions not require you to authorise via a second factor in the US? Do we even need to ask this question when cards there are still using signature-only verification (or even sometimes not even asking for signature nor PIN)? In all seriousness, they're dragging their feet in implementing 3DS2, do not have a rule like PSD2, and from time to time will even accept cards with nearly everything wrong except for card number and expiration. Even Stripe literally has an article titled "Charge succeeded despite CVC or ZIP check mismatch" (https://support.stripe.com/questions/charge-succeeded-despite-cvc-or-zip-check-mismatch https://support.stripe.com/questions/charge-succeeded-despit...) for merchants in other countries because that's how lax US banks are.
    - happymellon 3y ago
      That's insane. Although last time I was in the US I was told by stores that they didn't support contactless payments. I tapped anyway and it went through, after they tried to grab my card out of my hand to swipe it. Yeah, that's not going to work. Swiping is disabled except on a case by case basis, and grabbing my card out of my hard isn't going to get my custom.