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"PayPal has [nothing] to worry about for a long time." I'd be careful, sometimes these articles are alarmist and over-reacting but a lot of times they predict

"PayPal has [nothing] to worry about for a long time." I'd be careful, sometimes these articles are alarmist and over-reacting but a lot of times they predict the downfall of companies years ahead of their demise. Digg, Palm, Kodak, Yahoo, etc... A lot of these companies all display similar patterns right before things start to get bad for them. They stop innovating, they start getting surrounded by competitors, they get too comfortable thinking they're "too big to fail" and have the "network effect". Look at Palm alone, it was a leader in PDAs and in a few short years it was gone. The internet and technology are changing at extremely fast speeds. One year you're safe, the next year a competitor has taken your market share. It all happens so fast now. Easier to start, easier to implement, easier to set up, and little by little it's no longer hard for your client to switch payment systems.

jacques_chester 14y ago
Digg, Palm, Kodak and Yahoo are poor analogies to PayPal. None of those companies had positions which were defensible against a better technology. PayPal does. PayPal's barrier to competition isn't technology. It isn't service. It's not network effects. It's that they've done the infinitely tedious schlep of jumping through thousands and thousands of hoops all over the world to make it possible for me, an Australian, to do business with a person in the UK in USD if that's what I require. Nobody else can do that unless I arrive with millions of dollars in tow. Nobody else comes close. I desperately want that to change.
- true_religion 14y ago
  That's not really an insurmountable barrier. Once someone wins the US market, they'll use their treasure trove to enter other markers and then in a few short years we'll see paypal vanish.
  - moe 14y ago
    Once someone wins the US market, they'll use their treasure trove to enter other markets Sorry, reality disagrees. Hardly any of the american Paypal-competitors give a flying fuck about the rest of the world. And many of them have been around for the better part of a decade. The would-be gorillas 'Amazon Payments' and 'Google Merchant' are US-only and US/UK respectively.
    - true_religion 14y ago
      Notice I said "won" the US market. Paypal is still completely dominant in the US. Amazon Payments? Google Wallet? They're no where near even proving better than Paypal in local competition.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    So you're a startup and your model or base is international — and all you need to do is wait a "few years".
    - true_religion 14y ago
      If your model and base are international, you're overreaching. All startups have to start small and evolve from there. Once you prove your ideas in one market, its easier to duplicate your success in others. I would not advice a startup to take a lot of funding, then attack the international market initially. That kind of pre-mature scaling is reminiscent of Webvan.
      - Tloewald 14y ago
        International might include not in the US.
        true_religion 14y ago
        I presumed you meant international as in more than their home-base nation whatever it may be. I think it's possible to start a Paypal competitor for just Germany, then grow from there. But it'd be far more difficult to start a Paypal competitor that targets all of the EU.
- ChrisNorstrom 14y ago
  Being accepted internationally is not a proprietary technology. It's not something that ONLY PayPal can do. It happens to be something ONLY PayPal does at this moment. But honestly, give Square or Dwolla 7 years and they'll jump on the international bandwagon as well. The benefits are too numerous for anyone in that space to ignore international payments. Also, BitCoin. I wouldn't even consider it an option for myself for so many reasons but BitCoin is truly international and the only thing that comes close to PayPal at the moment. I'd rather not have to ask the other party to spend 6 and a half hours reading and understand exactly what bitcoin is, how it works, and weather or not they can trust it. Then spending 7 days moving money from Bank Accounts to Dwolla to MtGox. But it is an option. Especially for large sums of money IF it's from people you trust and IF they know how bitcoin works. But that's too many ifs.

jacques_chester 14y ago

Digg, Palm, Kodak and Yahoo are poor analogies to PayPal. None of those companies had positions which were defensible against a better technology. PayPal does. PayPal's barrier to competition isn't technology. It isn't service. It's not network effects. It's that they've done the infinitely tedious schlep of jumping through thousands and thousands of hoops all over the world to make it possible for me, an Australian, to do business with a person in the UK in USD if that's what I require. Nobody else can do that unless I arrive with millions of dollars in tow. Nobody else comes close. I desperately want that to change.

true_religion 14y ago
That's not really an insurmountable barrier. Once someone wins the US market, they'll use their treasure trove to enter other markers and then in a few short years we'll see paypal vanish.
- moe 14y ago
  Once someone wins the US market, they'll use their treasure trove to enter other markets Sorry, reality disagrees. Hardly any of the american Paypal-competitors give a flying fuck about the rest of the world. And many of them have been around for the better part of a decade. The would-be gorillas 'Amazon Payments' and 'Google Merchant' are US-only and US/UK respectively.
  - true_religion 14y ago
    Notice I said "won" the US market. Paypal is still completely dominant in the US. Amazon Payments? Google Wallet? They're no where near even proving better than Paypal in local competition.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  So you're a startup and your model or base is international — and all you need to do is wait a "few years".
  - true_religion 14y ago
    If your model and base are international, you're overreaching. All startups have to start small and evolve from there. Once you prove your ideas in one market, its easier to duplicate your success in others. I would not advice a startup to take a lot of funding, then attack the international market initially. That kind of pre-mature scaling is reminiscent of Webvan.
    - Tloewald 14y ago
      International might include not in the US.
      - true_religion 14y ago
        I presumed you meant international as in more than their home-base nation whatever it may be. I think it's possible to start a Paypal competitor for just Germany, then grow from there. But it'd be far more difficult to start a Paypal competitor that targets all of the EU.
ChrisNorstrom 14y ago
Being accepted internationally is not a proprietary technology. It's not something that ONLY PayPal can do. It happens to be something ONLY PayPal does at this moment. But honestly, give Square or Dwolla 7 years and they'll jump on the international bandwagon as well. The benefits are too numerous for anyone in that space to ignore international payments. Also, BitCoin. I wouldn't even consider it an option for myself for so many reasons but BitCoin is truly international and the only thing that comes close to PayPal at the moment. I'd rather not have to ask the other party to spend 6 and a half hours reading and understand exactly what bitcoin is, how it works, and weather or not they can trust it. Then spending 7 days moving money from Bank Accounts to Dwolla to MtGox. But it is an option. Especially for large sums of money IF it's from people you trust and IF they know how bitcoin works. But that's too many ifs.