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They will only release the funds when version 1.0 ships? Does PayPal not understand that it costs money to create products? That's the entire reasoning behind c

They will only release the funds when version 1.0 ships? Does PayPal not understand that it costs money to create products? That's the entire reasoning behind crowdfunding! 'Well you see this money you said you needed to make version 1.0 of the product? Well you can have it after you've finished'

zokier 13y ago
> That's the entire reasoning behind crowdfunding! They're not a crowdfunding service, they are a escrow service. The whole point of escrowing is that the service keeps the money safe until the transaction is completed (ie the buyer gets what she was buying).
- 300bps 13y ago
  I was under the impression that PayPal was a payment service. Party A uses it to send money to Party B and as long as no laws are broken, PayPal keeps its nose out of other people's business. What makes you think PayPal is an escrow service akin to escrow.com?
  - tinco 13y ago
    It is an escrow service because it allows the buyer to reverse the transaction.
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      It wouldn't kill paypal to have non-reversible transactions as long as this is made clear to the user.
      - andyhmltn 13y ago
        Having dealt with a lot of chargebacks (none legitimate) people that like to chargeback seem to just say that someone unauthorised gained access to their account and they never meant to make that payment so they can just turn around and say 'as I didn't make the payment I didn't agree to that' It would then make it super easy for someone to hack a PP account and buy loads of stuff with 'non-reversible' transactions.
      - jplewicke 13y ago
        Paypal is just an intermediary between merchants and whatever payment methods customers use to pay Paypal, such as debit/credit cards and bank transfers. And guess what? The modern financial system has no irreversible payment methods. Bank transfers, credit cards, and ACH are all reversible, wherever you go around the world. If you haven't heard of it before, the May Scale of Monetary Hardness is a great way of thinking about this: http://stakeventures.com/articles/2012/03/07/the-may-scale-of-money-hardness-and-bitcoin http://stakeventures.com/articles/2012/03/07/the-may-scale-o... . If you're a payment intermediary, and you're delivering irreversible assets like gold coins or briefcases full of cash in exchange for very reversible payment methods like credit cards for personal checks, you will get horribly, horribly burnt by fraud, because you can deliver the gold coin and find out weeks later that your credit card was charged back. http://whatilearnedtoday.jameslarisch.com/?action=view&url=bitcoin-ebay-profit http://whatilearnedtoday.jameslarisch.com/?action=view&url=b... is a great example of this with Bitcoin and Paypal respectively. It's not even about educating the user about irreversible transactions -- it's just that there's no way for Paypal to offer them unless customers fund their Paypal purchases by dropping off briefcases of cash and gold bullion at their local Paypal branch.
        Karunamon 13y ago
        Paypal already has a policy for dealing with users who reverse transactions out from under them. Unfortunately for the users, that policy is known as "scorched earth". We're talking account suspensions and referrals to collection agencies. It would certainly be a lot less skeevy if it was done for a service-oriented reason (i.e. one way transactions) instead of the "because fuck you" reason that they appear to use currently.
derefr 13y ago
Paypal understands full-well. They just don't want to be in that business to begin with. Whoever ends up accepting credit and debit cards (in this case Paypal) has to deal with chargebacks on those cards from unsatisfied customers, and crowdfunding is rife with chargebacks from unsatisfied customers. Paypal doesn't want to bear that burden; they never signed up for it. This whole problem would be mitigated if Paypal set certain limits on accounts by default ($3000 transfer per month, say)--that you'd obviously want to unlimit before running a campaign like this--and then required a phone call with the account owner to discuss the need for the unlimiting. Then they could just tell the crowdfunders "no" up-front.

zokier 13y ago

> That's the entire reasoning behind crowdfunding! They're not a crowdfunding service, they are a escrow service. The whole point of escrowing is that the service keeps the money safe until the transaction is completed (ie the buyer gets what she was buying).

300bps 13y ago
I was under the impression that PayPal was a payment service. Party A uses it to send money to Party B and as long as no laws are broken, PayPal keeps its nose out of other people's business. What makes you think PayPal is an escrow service akin to escrow.com?
- tinco 13y ago
  It is an escrow service because it allows the buyer to reverse the transaction.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    It wouldn't kill paypal to have non-reversible transactions as long as this is made clear to the user.
    - andyhmltn 13y ago
      Having dealt with a lot of chargebacks (none legitimate) people that like to chargeback seem to just say that someone unauthorised gained access to their account and they never meant to make that payment so they can just turn around and say 'as I didn't make the payment I didn't agree to that' It would then make it super easy for someone to hack a PP account and buy loads of stuff with 'non-reversible' transactions.
    - jplewicke 13y ago
      Paypal is just an intermediary between merchants and whatever payment methods customers use to pay Paypal, such as debit/credit cards and bank transfers. And guess what? The modern financial system has no irreversible payment methods. Bank transfers, credit cards, and ACH are all reversible, wherever you go around the world. If you haven't heard of it before, the May Scale of Monetary Hardness is a great way of thinking about this: http://stakeventures.com/articles/2012/03/07/the-may-scale-of-money-hardness-and-bitcoin http://stakeventures.com/articles/2012/03/07/the-may-scale-o... . If you're a payment intermediary, and you're delivering irreversible assets like gold coins or briefcases full of cash in exchange for very reversible payment methods like credit cards for personal checks, you will get horribly, horribly burnt by fraud, because you can deliver the gold coin and find out weeks later that your credit card was charged back. http://whatilearnedtoday.jameslarisch.com/?action=view&url=bitcoin-ebay-profit http://whatilearnedtoday.jameslarisch.com/?action=view&url=b... is a great example of this with Bitcoin and Paypal respectively. It's not even about educating the user about irreversible transactions -- it's just that there's no way for Paypal to offer them unless customers fund their Paypal purchases by dropping off briefcases of cash and gold bullion at their local Paypal branch.
      - Karunamon 13y ago
        Paypal already has a policy for dealing with users who reverse transactions out from under them. Unfortunately for the users, that policy is known as "scorched earth". We're talking account suspensions and referrals to collection agencies. It would certainly be a lot less skeevy if it was done for a service-oriented reason (i.e. one way transactions) instead of the "because fuck you" reason that they appear to use currently.

derefr 13y ago

Paypal understands full-well. They just don't want to be in that business to begin with. Whoever ends up accepting credit and debit cards (in this case Paypal) has to deal with chargebacks on those cards from unsatisfied customers, and crowdfunding is rife with chargebacks from unsatisfied customers. Paypal doesn't want to bear that burden; they never signed up for it. This whole problem would be mitigated if Paypal set certain limits on accounts by default ($3000 transfer per month, say)--that you'd obviously want to unlimit before running a campaign like this--and then required a phone call with the account owner to discuss the need for the unlimiting. Then they could just tell the crowdfunders "no" up-front.