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Comment by ladybro | Hacker News Reader

What are the alternatives in Europe that make Paypal not needed? Genuinely curious, not saying you're wrong by any means.

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Germany: SEPA direct debit, sofortueberweisung.de, giropay, and if you're willing to put up with PCI compliance bullshit, credit cards. All three are vastly cheaper than PP, too.

I'd rather pay with Paypal than SEPA SDD, which ported the brain damaged idea of allowing anyone to pull money from your account with an IBAN by simply claiming they are authorized. We actually had to lose our DD system with its sane authorization process to implement this crap.

And still, credit card fraud seems to be a huge issue in the US, while Lastschriftbetrug is a relatively minor issue in Germany. (and both have a charge back procedure)

In Germany you now also have paydirekt.de which is a direct competitor to PayPal initiated by most major banks in Germany.

I am in Germany, didn't know about the paydirect.de. Has anyone tested them?

I use it whenever it is available. The process is seamless and as far as I remember I was redirected to my bank, to enter my data there. I never had to give my bank data to a 3rd party.

PS: The proper domain is paydirekt.de

It's pretty useless if you don't buy sugar, Haribo or BBQ stuff on a daily basis.

I still find the idea behind sofortüberweisung shady. Maybe they're actually the nicest people in the world with the best security practices known to humanity, but I still won't hand them the login credentials to my online banking or my card's PIN.

They actually admitted (2011) that they scrape the last 30 days of transfers of your banking account. German Source: http://www.golem.de/1105/83811.html

Also Paysafecard. It's even anonymous: Buy in a store with cash and use it to pay online.

sofortueberweisung is kinda shady though - don't you have to agree that they are allowed to read your transaction history? Since you give them full access to your online banking account, they certainly are able to.

PCI compliance isn't that big a deal, unless you insist on handling the the transaction yourself, which almost no one does.

Going via a payment provider, like Strip, PayPal, PayEx and a boat load of other companies, reduces your PCI compliance to a self assessment form, which talk all of 10 minutes to fill out.

Barclays and Natwest in the UK will allow you to send money to anyone with an email address. Can't speak for other banks, though.

But all banks will transfer money if you have a recipient account number and sort code.

See, the point is that you're saying 'in the UK'. We've been struggling to find a payment solution that works globally and sadly PayPal is the best we have found that covers a lot of countries.

Barclays and Natwest in the UK will allow you to send money to anyone with an email address.

Anyone? Anyone in the UK? Or anyone in the UK with a Barclays or Natwest account? Paypal is still probably the quickest and easiest way to send money to 'anyone' in the world.

Barclays: Anyone in their 30 country list (PingIt is the app)

According to the PingIt website you can only send money internationally if you know the recipients IBAN number and transfers takes up to two working days. So it sounds like it is just an app front end to bog standard old school international bank transfers.

PayPal just seems like extra steps if your bank lets you do a straight transfer.

International bank transfers (at least to/from outside of Europe) are a massive pain, can take many days to clear and often cost quite a bit more than what PayPal charges.

And it's quick. I can send money between two different UK bank accounts, using sort code and account number, and it appears in the recipient's account within about half an hour.

In Europe (Germany and Austria from my experience), many online services specifically support bank transfers using an IBAN number. It does seem to take a little longer though for the money to process.

I live in a developing country (some call it third world) and we've had this capability for many years. I can pay from my computer, mobile, or at an ATM. How is the US so far behind the rest of the developed and developing world?

They only just got chip and pin cards, while everyone else is moving to contactless payments.

A lot of US banks have actually opted for chip and signature instead of chip and pin...

Which is almost pointless, I never had a signature checked against a card when they were widely used here. A PIN is always checked.

Germany is pretty bad in banks to be honest. Transfers can take a whole day even between my own accounts and no way of seeing any movements during the weekend, incredibly old school.

I've just done a bank transfer from Poland to UK and the money was in my Barclays account in 15 minutes. Just a couple years ago it used to take 3-4 days but now it's as quick as sending money locally.

Just normal bank transfer. As long as you have the target bank account number, which is standardized across Europe now, you can pay anyone. Takes a few days though. There is a European rule that a cross-border transfer may not cost more than a national one, which means that in most countries, only business accounts pay (low) fees.

> Takes a few days though

Typically 24h in the SEPA.

Still too long - I never use it for online shopping.

That's a bit optimistic. I've encountered 48hrs between my own accounts within Germany. I wish I still had the luxury of almost instant UK transfers.

In the Netherlands, within the same bank it can be within an hour or so, but to other banks up to two days. Internationally from/to NL can still take a week in my experience.

You want to pay someone they give you their IBAN and BIK numbers, and you can send them money using this (transfers are usually free or very cheap)

No need for handwritten pieces of paper

You still usually need a TAN that's either on a piece of paper at home or generated by a special device (and with Smartphones, I don't really trust mTAN), with PayPal you only need a password. So yes, it's less secure, but more convenient.

Merchants also seem to prefer PayPal because it gives them an instant payment confirmation.

You're talking about Germany right?

Was never asked for this in Ireland, though they use an electronic token (because paper is outdated) if the transaction is outside of Ireland

We switched from PayPal because the service was so bad, with 1 in 4 card payments from a very reputable sector (schools) refused for no discernible reason. Mu inner cynic strongly suspects it was purely to drive more people to use a PayPal account.

We tried two other card providers before we found Stripe, and my inner cynic has been silenced. I strongly recommend them.

Sure, Stripe is great - but we couldn't rely on credit cards alone, at least not here in Germany. The value of Paypal is the fact that it connects to your bank account and enables instant payments for people without credit cards, which aren't that common here in Germany.

That's why we offer Stripe and Paypal in our store. Dropping Paypal would be insane as it is our most popular payment method, with Stripe coming in as a close second.

Nochex was UK only when I used them, but their website now indicates they take payments from European cards now too.

My bank and Visa integrate 2-factor authentication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure

Every bank here does this.

any bank that accepts visa/mastercard ?

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