Asking as an ignorant person, what’s wrong with PayPal?
Their policies, verification systems, KYC/AML processes, risk aversion, and customer support leave many PayPal users with unmet expectations, especially when there is an issue with the transaction and PayPal is asked to assist.
The company has found ways to avoid some of the regulations that banks are held to which is partly the reason for the issues.
If you search the web for PayPal experiences, you’ll find concerns such as their 1.3 star rating with almost 35,000 reviews on Trustpilot.
The company has found ways to avoid some of the regulations that banks are held to
If you look at all the unicorns of the past few decades, a surprisingly large number of them did it with software that wasn’t in any way technologically advanced, but exploited technology to find loopholes in the kind of industry regulations that were there to stop companies from screwing people over.
PayPal was a way to do banking without registering as a bank. Uber, Doordash and other gig economy apps are exercises in sidestepping employment law. Airbnb, despite its origins as a couchsurfing app, didn’t get huge until professional “hosts” started using it as a way to run apartment hotels without having to meet the expectations or obligations of one.
If you want to build a tech unicorn, all you need to ask yourself is, “how can I make something 5% more convenient and 200% more shit?”.
It’s also ridiculously difficult if not impossible to process a legal name change on your account, unlike a real bank. This means that married women, people who changed their name to avoid unsafe family members, and trans people are basically just not able to have accounts under their new legal names.
They quite often steal your money.
It’s got all the worst parts of extreme anti-fraud measures, like freezing your account and holding onto your money just because you did something suspicious like receive money, but without actually protecting anyone from fraud.
A few matters - About 5-6 years ago - PayPal was going to make telemarketing your phone number a requirement in order to have an account - If you had an account, they were going to FORCE you to allow their 3rd party marketing calls. No opt-out available whatsoever.
PayPal is also an owner of the extension Honey - an extension that promoted they would try every online coupon code to see if you could save money on a deal. Recently (within the last year) it was discovered that even if they didn’t provide you with any discount at all - they were still hijacking the referral links that brought you to the shop site in the first place. They were also striking deals to those same vendors about kickbacks to NOT keep the best coupons in their system. Essentially they were taking money from three sides, promoters, vendors, and the purchasers - all while NOT providing the best possible coupon codes - which was the whole advertised point of their service. Lawsuits on this are pending.
They don’t like free speech, they’ve stopped processing payments on steam because they don’t like some of the games on the platform.
Isn’t that like all credit card payment processors? Maybe we should just use Monero
I’ve only heard of Visa, MasterCard and PayPal censoring content but I could be mistaken.
It’s pretty easy for a scammer to get your money from you via paypal with no recourse. Person claiming to be selling an item for x dollars. You purchase item. They get money. They disappear. No item. Paypal: “oh well!”
Wouldn’t you use PayPal as a digital wallet for you credit cards & reverse fraudulent charges through your credit card company?
Now if you link an actual bank account to PayPal, pay with that bank account, and get scammed, then that’s your actual money spent, and no shit that’s harder to reverse. You’d probably have to through your bank, and they may not do it.
Well that’s how money transaction works. The only way for you to have any recourse in this situation is something that can enforce laws. Or avoiding the situation all together through a reputable escrow.
A non exhaustive list of what makes them awful: expertbeacon.com/why-is-paypal-so-bad/
Afaik, the issue that was making the most victims, was that they were facilitating scammers that targeted sellers:
5. Good Luck Recouping Losses as a Seller in Disputes.
89% of sellers experienced dispute resolution problems with PayPal in 2021 surveys. Despite providing evidence the item shipped or service rendered, they lost cases and sums averaging $622.
This is driven by PayPal‘s buyer-favored review round taking 1-2 weeks. This favors scamming buyers at the expense of legitimate businesses.
Iirc, there was a time when Paypal always sided with the buyer, irregardless of evidence or past track record, the review process was useless. Once scammers picked up on this and began scamming sellers en masse, Paypal still kept their policy unchanged for years and sellers started to raise their prices on platforms that forced them to accept Paypal (ebay used to do this). Ebay has since tossed Paypal off their platform. I don’t know if Paypal ever improved.
It was founded and continues to be run by some real shitbags.
If you sell things on eBay and the like, PayPal likes to fuck you over
Blackmist@feddit.uk 13 hours ago
All the authority of a bank.
None of the responsibility.
Plus Peter Thiel and Elon Musk had a hand in it, and made their fortunes. It’s right up there with Hitler and Reagan in the “reasons to invent a time machine and go back and destroy something”.