PayPal? No way
minifree.org
minifree.org
As other comment says [1], this is true for in-house transactions, but is hell for foreigners. I had to quit my job as a contractor for an American company because the bank in my home country blocked all the wired transfers after the sum of all the money started to exceed an annual limit of USD $25,000. I tried to create an international bank account in Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, HSBC, and Citi and they all rejected my application because a) I don't exist in the credit system and/or b) my home country has a bad reputation.
I tried to use PayPal but their fees are too high and I realized that there was no easy way for me to get that money out of their system since their service is not popular where I live. Right now there are 15 days worth of my salary in my PayPal account that I cannot touch. If getting a work visa wasn't hard enough, now I cannot work for any international company (as a remote contractor) because I cannot get paid, nice, very-very nice — the perfect way to kill people's dreams.
I was on my phone so no way to change my MAC address unfortunately.
So I use paypal. I accept to pay the amount. And that was it.
Now a week later I connect to the free wifi in the same airport. And the thing decides to charge my paypal for one hour of browsing. I never opted to open my paypal account for boingo crap to have unlimited withdrawals.
So I contacted paypal and told them there was a fraud. I had never allowed these transactions. Paypal refused to do anything.
First I changed my email address. I received a confirmation and re-activated my account. Nice so far. Then I thought I'd generate a new, longer password. I pasted the 24-character password into the settings form. It was saved successfully.
After trying to login again though, it just wouldn't accept my login! So I went through the password recovery process. I received a link and then was asked to answer security questions. The security questions were ancient, so I facepalmed at first, but I was pretty sure I got the answers right after some thinking. It took me 10 tries to get the proper variation of the answers (it doesn't tell you which one is wrong).
Then I was presented with the new password form. I tried to paste the new 24-character password again. This form didn't allow you to paste the password in, you had to type it in manually for "added security". Then I realized the password was limited to 20 characters, and the previous form (in account settings) was just happily letting me paste a 24-character password while trimming the end silently!.
And this is 2016 on the web...
To do an international wire transfer into the US, it must first be routed through one of the few large banks that have their own SWIFT code (e.g. Wells Fargo), then often through a second intermediary bank before the payment reaches the receiver's bank. All the routing in the US is done using ABA numbers, which is unique to the US.
Few European banks seem to be able to handle this convoluted process. More often then not, when we've attempted to receive an incoming wire transfer from from a European customer, the payment has gotten misrouted because the sending bank neglected to fill out the application form properly.
By contrast, we've had very few problems receiving international payments via PayPal.
Bank wires can cost $20-50. Unless we are sending you thousands its rarely cost effective to wire funds.
Use bitcoin for your donations like everyone else in the 'freedom' game.
Recently, I heard people were doing flim flams with US $ and the internet. Should I keep using those?
Not quite "thousands", but its not like they're proposing you spend an extra $20-50 to make a cup-of-coffee-sized "donation".
They have their disadvantages too, but the writer doesn't even evaluate them.
". Most merchants outsource to third party card processing facilities (which won’t be mentioned here), typically redirecting to a page on that providers website, for accepting payments. The problem with this is that they often serve proprietary JavaScript"
The browser running the javascript can be free/libre, the OS it is running on can be free/libre, the javascript language and browser environment is relatively standardized, it's sandboxed ... The JS is really just part of the page and/or service API.
FSF doesn't have as big a problem calling banks that use closed-source telephony software or making api requests to closed-source webserver backends, there's really not that big a difference from a fully free/libre client interpreting a script in a standardized sandboxed environment, which it just received from a service, as part of using that service.
The other odd FSF corner-case is that firmware blobs that you can't update are OK, but firmware blobs that you can update are not OK (even if they are freely redistributable). I'd say having a hardline stance on this is just not helpful.
On firmware, the FSF has drawn a bright line on where hardware ends and software starts, and where they've drawn it is on whether firmware on device can be updated or not. If its not updatable, its a piece of hardware, plain and simple. If its updatable, then it is software, thus said code should be freely licensed and not Tivoized.
There's a reason people care enough to hate them.
I've looked into some of those services, though not all. Most of them seem to require me to maintain a Web server and to write back end code (hope I'm using the correct terminology) to route the customer's payment to the payment processor. This isn't something I know how to do, especially if I want it to be secure, and paying to have it done for me would be an expense.
So it's PayPal for now until something better comes along. I check out the alternatives every year or so.
Paypal is just lazy —or efficient, if you're on their side— when it comes to risk. That is to say that if they have reason to believe they might lose money with a transaction you make, they make you absorb that risk as inconvenience. The most commonly complained about is holding back funds while they wait for your customers to issue chargebacks. Chargebacks are HORRIBLE because the underlying payment people demand they just happen. It can be a huge loss point for payment intermediaries.
With that sort of potential loss, it's simply easier for Paypal —the lawyer-breathing behemoth that they are— to assume you're more likely to suck it up than try to sue (have you read the T&Cs). And they've scaled this so it all happens automagically. How very efficient/evil of them.
If you want the best rate as a seller, you have to be a super-low risk and find somebody that understands your business, its risk and is willing to undercut the standard-risk market to process your payments for you.
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Direct wire transfers put [almost] all the risk on the consumer. There used to be a timeframe you could "intercept" a transfer but with things like Faster Payments in the UK, transfers are practically instant and irreversible without a court order.
So no, for the purposes of buying stuff, wire transfers aren't better for us. They're free for you, but we take on a LOT of risk.
This is ridiculous either way, I'll gladly use PayPal any time and I use Bitcoin any time too.
I'd say "FFS FSF" if it was still FSF, but alas the right to make such wordplay was denied to me.
> Western Union?
> This requires the director of Minifree to show her ID to a cash pickup point, which she doesn’t want to do.
Showing proof of identity in order to pick up cash seems pretty reasonable to me.
[1] https://libreboot.org/gnu/
[2] https://www.gov.uk/apply-gender-recognition-certificate/over...
Why do you think so?
Won't the wire fee be like 30 bucks or something? 300%.
Going to US? Better bring $30.
> Cryptocurrencies are generally difficult to deal with, accounting-wise
Not true, use BitPay.com and you never need to touch that dirty dirty internet money if you don't want to.
>In UK tax returns, you also need to convert everything to GBP
Done, use Bitpay or similar service to accept cryptos and have the increasingly worthless GBP deposited directly into your bank account.
> so this means we’d be forced to use a BTC exchange.
Not directly at least, you just made this up didn't you?
You don't like the current model but are unwilling to even look into the best alternative available? Bitcoin is money, you can accept the money or not, but don't blame the money just because you don't like that particular shade of green.
But the current view of PayPal is different from the historical view. PayPal was a brilliant service through the end of the 90's and early-00's, while Musk was involved. You can't retroactively apply the dislike the service has generated since their paths diverged. And even then I would contribute much more of the social impact to Thiel.
I pointed out a primary reason we often see these kinds of posts, (freezing accounts), in one paragraph.
Then in the next, I mention the overall view of Paypal is more negative than it used to be, when you could have actually attributed something about that to Musk.
Trust me, you'll understand why people hate PayPal so much once it happens to you.
Domestically? Sure.
Internationally? Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.