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It is amusing to read an article proclaiming PayPal's advances into the mobile space. Stripe seems to dominate in this area. Card readers hooked up to iPhones a

by com2kid 13y ago

It is amusing to read an article proclaiming PayPal's advances into the mobile space. Stripe seems to dominate in this area. Card readers hooked up to iPhones and iPads are everywhere. Around the world a multitude of other mobile payment solutions have taken hold. PayPal? Well they have managed to ruin their reputation. Heck their entire customer experience is spammy and creepy, with constant requests to have direct access to my bank account. IMHO PayPal also lost the opportunity to become the micropayment processor on the web. It is funny that it is possible to do with technologies like dogecoin what PayPal disallows purely through its high fees.

secabeen 13y ago
It's not Paypal that's generating the high fees. That's the credit card processors. Paypal is happy to perform totally free payments for transactions that are funded by low-cost sources (bank accounts/ETFs and Paypal balances) and which need no fraud protection. The problem is that the credit card processors take 2+% of every transaction, and no company can succeed if they eat that cost. This is particularly so because saavy cardholders will engage in airline mileage and points arbitrage if you don't pass on that cost. Are any of the Paypal competitors offering services that don't include credit card fees, either on the merchants or the customers? Paypal is making those fees visible, but they're not imposing them.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  > Paypal is happy to perform totally free payments for transactions that are funded by low-cost sources (bank accounts/ETFs and Paypal balances) and which need no fraud protection. Doesn't Paypal still take a fee if you pay for a commercial good or service and use your bank account? And its still the same as the CC processor fee? > Are any of the Paypal competitors offering services that don't include credit card fees, either on the merchants or the customers? Paypal is making those fees visible, but they're not imposing them. Dwolla, but they're in a grey area of sorts.
  - secabeen 13y ago
    Late response here, but you are correct that paypal always takes a fee for commercial transactions disclosed to paypal. Their argument would probably be that they require commercial transactions to have fraud protection. That said, there are areas where very small businesses use fee-free Paypal for commercial payments by disguising them as personal payments. (Used camera gear is where I've personally seen it)
yuhong 13y ago
I think this was why David Marcus was hired in the first place.

by com2kid 13y ago

secabeen 13y ago

It's not Paypal that's generating the high fees. That's the credit card processors. Paypal is happy to perform totally free payments for transactions that are funded by low-cost sources (bank accounts/ETFs and Paypal balances) and which need no fraud protection. The problem is that the credit card processors take 2+% of every transaction, and no company can succeed if they eat that cost. This is particularly so because saavy cardholders will engage in airline mileage and points arbitrage if you don't pass on that cost. Are any of the Paypal competitors offering services that don't include credit card fees, either on the merchants or the customers? Paypal is making those fees visible, but they're not imposing them.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
> Paypal is happy to perform totally free payments for transactions that are funded by low-cost sources (bank accounts/ETFs and Paypal balances) and which need no fraud protection. Doesn't Paypal still take a fee if you pay for a commercial good or service and use your bank account? And its still the same as the CC processor fee? > Are any of the Paypal competitors offering services that don't include credit card fees, either on the merchants or the customers? Paypal is making those fees visible, but they're not imposing them. Dwolla, but they're in a grey area of sorts.
- secabeen 13y ago
  Late response here, but you are correct that paypal always takes a fee for commercial transactions disclosed to paypal. Their argument would probably be that they require commercial transactions to have fraud protection. That said, there are areas where very small businesses use fee-free Paypal for commercial payments by disguising them as personal payments. (Used camera gear is where I've personally seen it)

yuhong 13y ago

I think this was why David Marcus was hired in the first place.