I know that FedNow isn't really a digital currency system and I'm not making any assumptions about how it's going to play out, but I hope one consequence of it is that sites like Paypal start seeing a lot more competition and lose a lot of power.
I know other countries have similar systems, but the US being a holdout and having terrible money transfer options despite being a massive market in the tech space maybe (hopefully?) is the reason that hasn't already happened?
I don't feel like I know enough to make any predictions, I'm just hopeful.
The dollar is already a digital currency, and its issuance is largely decentralized. Most dollars are issued by retail banks. What you can't do is self-custody the digital dollars or have an account at the Fed.
FedNow is going to be fine, just like ACH but faster. PayPal sucks in a lot of ways, but there are reasons you would use it over an actual money sending service like Zelle, FedNow or Wise. For what it's worth it's pretty rare that I have been materially adversely affected by the latency of an ACH payment. That's not to say I don't welcome FedNow with open arms, though, I very much do.
For the life of me I cannot understand anyone would use PayPal. I'd rather trust the postal system with an envelope of money. I have yet to see an area where there aren't better options.
At the moment I use paypal when my bank rejects a credit card transaction due to fraud risk. For example this happened yesterday when I tried to make a payment to a (very reputable) educational institution for an application fee. This is by no means a high risk transaction. In fact I would go so far as to say the payment could never in a million, billion, Brazillian years be fraud, but it was rejected.
But they take paypal also, so no bother. Do the transaction on paypal.
This kind of thing happens maybe once every couple of months for me, and is why I keep paypal around.
Edit to add: I think some UK banks are much more trigger-happy than the global average when it comes to flagging transactions as possible fraud. I once had to pay my tax bill (to the UK government) by paypal because the debit card transaction was declined.
Paypal is useful, because it transfers money instantly. Sending money in an envelope isn't an option when you want something instantly. As a buyer, it also offers a form of protection from fraudulent sellers, which you also don't have with the postal service.
10-15 years ago (when I started using paypal) most Europeans didn't have a credit card and most US-based services (and things like Ebay and Dealextreme) didn't accept anything but credit cards and paypal. And this sometimes is still the case.
It depends on what you mean by "use PayPal". To give out my debit card details as infrequently as possible, if a business supports paying with paypal I'll use them as the payment provider. I don't store any money with them though.
PayPal is excellent for sending money (buying) for the same reason it is terrible for receiving money (selling).
Essentially, the buyer is always right, and so, as a buyer, it is very easy to get your money back in case of a problem. The seller is the one who gets all the fees, and needs to justify himself if there is a dispute. Sellers offer PayPal because even though it is really bad for them, it gets them customers.
I use PayPal for when I'm buying stuff from websites that I use very infrequently. I "trust" (in the lightest possible sense) PayPal more than a random website with my card details. Making it go through PayPal seems safer?
I don't get the angle of the "random people" here - is it just to cause a nuisance by causing target accounts to incur fees? I mean it's stupid but a lot of PayPal stuff is stupid.
> To a point, I am suspecting Paypal pretends to be the random online stranger that sent me the money and then disputed it
> is it just to cause a nuisance by causing target accounts to incur fees?
Most likely, they give money to a random email address using a stolen card, then dispute it and receive that money back, but now it's clean money because it comes from Paypal.
PayPal is the pinnacle of stupidity. I've sold the same digital product many thousand times, and this has happened multiple times:
Some customers decides to try to get it for free by paying and then creating a PayPal claim by lying that someone else made the purchases or that it was not delivered. And this usually works, and people tell others, so more people abuse it.
Basically every single time someone tries to commit "friendly fraud" as the card networks calls and it(customer tries to scam seller by lying), there are a handful of transactions from one person. PayPal usually rules 90 % of the cases in favor of the buyer.
However, there can be 20 purchases during just a couple of hours from one person and card, and somehow PayPal is certain that purchase 6 and 10 was legit, while the rest was someone who used the card without permission. That seems probable, right? Even on a account with a flawless record for over 10 years I've had this happen so many times. Usually when this happens I have to spend hours on this and contact PayPal by phone to get the money back. Usually the customer gets the money too, for some absurd reason.
PayPal's fraud system is absolutely garbage, and so is the standard email support. Contacting account managers at least gives you what seems to be a human response.
I too got my PayPal account limited in 2012 as a result of a scammer who abused PayPal disputes.
The solution is super simple: make buyers pay to create PayPal claims and use the money to have real people quickly look over the cases. This is similar to how cases are handled for card networks.
Was the claim legit? Money back, including the claim fee. The merchant has to pay a fee, same way as today.
Was the claim not legit? Basically free money for PayPal, and some should probably be shared with the merchant for helping out with solving the fake claim.
At least in europe the scams on PayPal has mostly shifted from "unauthorized use" to "not delivered" as a result of strong consumer authentication.
This is super interesting to me. I am an amateur artist and I publish my stuff on instagram (@pamar).
In the last year I had multiple cases of people contacting me out of the blue and asking if I could draw a picture of their nephew's favourite dog (it is always a dog, and it is always for their nephew whose birthday is coming soon so there is an implicit sense of urgency).
I never actually pursued this stuff because it was obviously a scam of some kind (I draw mostly nudes, dogs or animals in general amount to less than 1% of my production so far, so someone starting their message with "I just adore your style can you please draw a dog for me..." is obviously either a scammer or blind).
Another clear sign is that they are obviously following a script (my standard answer is something alongside the lines of "Gee, thanks, but I do not really work on commissions, and I don't draw animals anyway" to which they would infallibly answer "Fantastic, would 2500USD be ok for you?" - at this point I just block them).
But I am still a bit confused about what the angle would be for this type of scams: assuming they send me 100$ and then open a claim against me because I did not deliver... at most they would get 100$ back after a few days. There is no actual profit, right? (I am considering one of my drawings basically worthless, I draw on paper, usually a5 or smaller).
Is this a laundering schema? What would they get out of it?
(There are also lots of people asking to buy my stuff for NFT, I did not fall for that, either, but some other artist on IG explained to me that usually they ask you to create an account on some third party site... the account requires a fee, and after you have paid for it the NFT guy will just disappear - so in that case the way they get money from you is clear... but I still don't get how it would work in case of a physical item).
As a consumer, if I was obligated to pay to file a claim with a payment provider I'd be disincentivized to use that payment solution. Also, if I had a real issue and the fraud system failed to evaluate the case properly/competently then I'd immediately cancel my account and avoid further use.
Despite being the only person who's ever owned my email address, someone else somehow has it added to their PayPal account.
Last I checked, Google's survey app inexplicably pays out to PayPal even though they have Google Wallet, and doubly inexplicably will only pay to what it thinks your email address is with no option to change it. So… someone in Brazil has my survey payments.
UPI allows sending money using phone number only in India. It is at much bigger scale than Paypal. Over last 6 six years not even once sent me free money.
danShumway|2 years ago
I know other countries have similar systems, but the US being a holdout and having terrible money transfer options despite being a massive market in the tech space maybe (hopefully?) is the reason that hasn't already happened?
I don't feel like I know enough to make any predictions, I'm just hopeful.
arcticbull|2 years ago
FedNow is going to be fine, just like ACH but faster. PayPal sucks in a lot of ways, but there are reasons you would use it over an actual money sending service like Zelle, FedNow or Wise. For what it's worth it's pretty rare that I have been materially adversely affected by the latency of an ACH payment. That's not to say I don't welcome FedNow with open arms, though, I very much do.
voytec|2 years ago
PP recently created their own scam^Wstablecoin PYUSD[1]
[1] https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/manage-money/crypto...
falsandtru|2 years ago
https://togetter.com/li/2172555
https://togetter.com/li/2015918
Dah00n|2 years ago
seanhunter|2 years ago
But they take paypal also, so no bother. Do the transaction on paypal.
This kind of thing happens maybe once every couple of months for me, and is why I keep paypal around.
Edit to add: I think some UK banks are much more trigger-happy than the global average when it comes to flagging transactions as possible fraud. I once had to pay my tax bill (to the UK government) by paypal because the debit card transaction was declined.
addandsubtract|2 years ago
hexfish|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
SCdF|2 years ago
GuB-42|2 years ago
Essentially, the buyer is always right, and so, as a buyer, it is very easy to get your money back in case of a problem. The seller is the one who gets all the fees, and needs to justify himself if there is a dispute. Sellers offer PayPal because even though it is really bad for them, it gets them customers.
domh|2 years ago
neom|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
smcl|2 years ago
> To a point, I am suspecting Paypal pretends to be the random online stranger that sent me the money and then disputed it
I would highly doubt this.
seszett|2 years ago
Most likely, they give money to a random email address using a stolen card, then dispute it and receive that money back, but now it's clean money because it comes from Paypal.
NorwegianDude|2 years ago
Some customers decides to try to get it for free by paying and then creating a PayPal claim by lying that someone else made the purchases or that it was not delivered. And this usually works, and people tell others, so more people abuse it.
Basically every single time someone tries to commit "friendly fraud" as the card networks calls and it(customer tries to scam seller by lying), there are a handful of transactions from one person. PayPal usually rules 90 % of the cases in favor of the buyer.
However, there can be 20 purchases during just a couple of hours from one person and card, and somehow PayPal is certain that purchase 6 and 10 was legit, while the rest was someone who used the card without permission. That seems probable, right? Even on a account with a flawless record for over 10 years I've had this happen so many times. Usually when this happens I have to spend hours on this and contact PayPal by phone to get the money back. Usually the customer gets the money too, for some absurd reason.
PayPal's fraud system is absolutely garbage, and so is the standard email support. Contacting account managers at least gives you what seems to be a human response.
I too got my PayPal account limited in 2012 as a result of a scammer who abused PayPal disputes.
The solution is super simple: make buyers pay to create PayPal claims and use the money to have real people quickly look over the cases. This is similar to how cases are handled for card networks.
Was the claim legit? Money back, including the claim fee. The merchant has to pay a fee, same way as today.
Was the claim not legit? Basically free money for PayPal, and some should probably be shared with the merchant for helping out with solving the fake claim.
At least in europe the scams on PayPal has mostly shifted from "unauthorized use" to "not delivered" as a result of strong consumer authentication.
Pamar|2 years ago
In the last year I had multiple cases of people contacting me out of the blue and asking if I could draw a picture of their nephew's favourite dog (it is always a dog, and it is always for their nephew whose birthday is coming soon so there is an implicit sense of urgency).
I never actually pursued this stuff because it was obviously a scam of some kind (I draw mostly nudes, dogs or animals in general amount to less than 1% of my production so far, so someone starting their message with "I just adore your style can you please draw a dog for me..." is obviously either a scammer or blind).
Another clear sign is that they are obviously following a script (my standard answer is something alongside the lines of "Gee, thanks, but I do not really work on commissions, and I don't draw animals anyway" to which they would infallibly answer "Fantastic, would 2500USD be ok for you?" - at this point I just block them).
But I am still a bit confused about what the angle would be for this type of scams: assuming they send me 100$ and then open a claim against me because I did not deliver... at most they would get 100$ back after a few days. There is no actual profit, right? (I am considering one of my drawings basically worthless, I draw on paper, usually a5 or smaller).
Is this a laundering schema? What would they get out of it? (There are also lots of people asking to buy my stuff for NFT, I did not fall for that, either, but some other artist on IG explained to me that usually they ask you to create an account on some third party site... the account requires a fee, and after you have paid for it the NFT guy will just disappear - so in that case the way they get money from you is clear... but I still don't get how it would work in case of a physical item).
Any clues?
fuzzybear3965|2 years ago
astrange|2 years ago
Last I checked, Google's survey app inexplicably pays out to PayPal even though they have Google Wallet, and doubly inexplicably will only pay to what it thinks your email address is with no option to change it. So… someone in Brazil has my survey payments.
addandsubtract|2 years ago
killingtime74|2 years ago
joker_minmax|2 years ago
paypal_woes|2 years ago
I also coincidentally am having a spat with Paypal at the moment, hence my new username.
okeuro49|2 years ago
eimrine|2 years ago
jdthedisciple|2 years ago
gopher167|2 years ago