PayPal Launches PayPal.Me, Request Money Using Your Own Personalized URL | Hacker News Reader

PayPal Launches PayPal.Me, Request Money Using Your Own Personalized URL

techcrunch.com

59 pointsourmandave34 comments

Yesterday's discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10152224

I'm using Paypal to pay for whatever I can right now and once my account is at zero I'm never using the account ever again. You see moving my funds to my bank account was impossible and no one at paypal would explain it to me after numerous calls.

Looks like just a small charge to signup:

https://paypal.me/signup/5/

I'm joking, of course.

Yeah, 'signup' should probably be in the blacklist. Someone grabbed /support too - https://www.paypal.me/support.

edit: And https://www.paypal.me/help

Sadly for me, it says it's not available in Estonia. Even though the article mentions that they (unlike Venmo) should be available to users outside US and US credit cards. Oh well, guess I just have to wait until some Estonian start-up steps up in this field.

Estonia is so ripe for startups, I'm surprised Europeans all over aren't flocking to it.

Cheap (by most European standards) intensely skilled workers who speak fluent English in a country who's government has the best investment in technology in the world.

From what I read last, Estonian workers (especially those who work in tech) are fleeing the country due to lack of jobs- it'd be nice to give them a way of staying home.. too..

It works in Canada, which might seem really obvious to the world, but we counter-intuitively get left out of a lot of USA services even considering our proximity and similar market. It doesn't help you, I know, but I thought I'd just chime in for those that come after.

Slim chance that any Estonian startup will though. No-one is willing to dole out the cash for the legal side of a payments company. There also most likely is a lack of competent CISO-s, as most PII in Estonia is public and not a lot of places need to protect payments data.

Isn't this a copy of Square Cash https://cash.me ?

Definitely the unaddressed elephant in the linked article.

The mobile-first design, the '.me' address... all of this points to an answer to Square Cash.

Has techcrunch become complete cancer now? My Safari keeps freezing trying to render that pulp.

Does Ghostery help reduce the load death?

It reports 14 trackers, ads and other crud items.

Cool. Just created my own: https://www.paypal.me/100th/1

(Just for the test, I'm gonna give every 1000th person back the total I received like this. That should be something around $1000. Not sure how the conversion with $€ works. I'll let you know when/if that happens. Everything above the $1 I consider as a donation, but not required ;) )

Update: after some consideration adjusted to $1. Seems better as test.

Paypal woke up after so many bitcoin startups offered this feature(changetip.com notably). Too bad, they didn't fix their other problems first.

It would be much better if the payer could just use his credit card and email instead of having to sign up, people would be more inclined to use. The payee could send it to anybody (because they don't have to worry about if the payer has an account), and the payer because they don't have to sign up.

They should focus on getting some working dashboard and integration for SaaS.

Maximum limit of just under a million £$€ in the URl.

https://www.paypal.me/edent/999999.99

If you're feeling generous

I know I sent you money the last time you asked.. this time maybe not ;)

I wanted to see how it looked, enjoy your penny (and probably my details).

All I can see is your name and email address.

I've refunded your penny :-)

For me the page just displays random Chinese text, not a very useful service.

https://i.imgur.com/MoNUKWo.png

"Sorry about that...

PayPal.Me isn't available in your country.

Change your locale?"

My browser is definitely sending english language headers.

For me it was in french while i live in the Netherlands (where we speak dutch). Somebody needs to get a fancier IP db maybe.

I think all browsers send the accept-language header now, mine is set to en-US and the site completely ignores it.

Your email address was already your own personalized URL...

Great - now you pay somone and PayPal makes another 3% of the volume. We really need to replace the PayPal/CC fiasko out there.

And who's going to give you a warranty on your money? Bitcoin? hahahah

I haven't mentioned Bitcoin at all. No, the fee structure tied to CC (and also PayPal since it's largely based on CC) is so multi-tiered, that it needs to be redone without up to 5 tiers (PayPal, Visa, Issuing bank etc) making money on a transaction.

EFTPOSin Europe e.g. has way lower transaction costs and there is absolutely no reason why this shouldn't apply for credit card transactions. Some european countries have been regulating the visa/master card interchange fee already, I hope there is more to come.

PayPal is free for friends/family when you use a bank account instead of a credit card. And a variety of US banks already allow you to transfer money via ACH for free, even between banks.

EFTPOS actually originated in the USA in the 1980s. In the NYC area it was known as "NYCE" and centered around ATM sharing.

Citibank didn't join and that one drunk friend who'd insist on walking eight blocks in a shady neighborhood at 3am to save a buck pretty much killed the movement.

It looks like someone didn't read Paul Grahams essay: Change Your Name[1].

As far as the service, I feel inextricably linked to PayPal right now. I used PayPal through the early Ebay years and while I don't have any money in my account; It still pays for my Uber and I have a few friends who haven't updated to Venmo yet. There are also a few items which I've purchased online where I use PayPal as a proxy so the company doesn't get my CC info. I'll probably end up setting up an account just to hold my name, but I doubt I'll use it much.

[1] - http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html

The first line of the linked article is "If you have a US startup called X and you don't have x.com, you should probably change your name."

Pretty sure Paypal owns paypal.com. Also pretty sure Paypal is not a startup. Not sure how this article is relevant.

And the extra ironic part is that PayPal literally even owns x.com...

Yep, your'e right; I was attempting to make a joke. I guess I should have known better based on the forum.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com