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Comment by martin-adams | Hacker News Reader

I guess this is in relation to the following clause?

In representations to your customers or in public communications, you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method. At all of your points of sale (in whatever form), you agree not to try to dissuade or inhibit your customers from using PayPal; and, if you enable your customers to pay you with PayPal, you agree to treat PayPal’s payment mark at least at par with other payment methods offered.

So my interpretation is that this is to avoid merchants from pushing cheaper payment methods by saying negative things about PayPal or making it harder to find or use. I'm not sure this is as dramatic as the title makes out. Am I missing something?

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> you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method.

Anyone else intrigued by that statement? WTH is PayPal if not a payment method? Are they trying to avoid PayPal being just an option in a list of choices?

I think that is as a payment method when compared to other payment methods.

I think the rate hikes are more interesting. They also recently removed the volume discounts from Paypal Pro...they used to be significantly cheaper than Stripe (2.2% vs 2.9%, assuming reasonable volume). This is no longer the case.

The change will affect some vendors though. Internet.bs, a popular domain registrar, currently hides Paypal behind a "more payment options" button. This will force them to stop that.

Maybe. Maybe not. Internet.bs may choose to remove Paypal altogether if they have better methods.

That's just another variation of "stop that" though.

This is akin to my bank freezing my accounts because I gave them a bad review online.

I would love to see them try to enforce this. *If a brick and mortar bank tried this there would be a run on their accounts so fast it would make Usain Bolt blush.

As a seller, you don't have a choice. You can:

* Accept PayPal, and play ball with their policies.

* Disparage them, and get your account seized.

* Not accept PayPal, and lose out on millions of customers.

Please don't say BitCoin is an alternative. Unless you're selling heroin, or your entire customer base consists of crypto-anarcho-libertarians, it's not.

* Use alternative payment systems.

Equivalent to #3. There are a lot of people who only use PayPal online. In the HN space? Probably not that many. If you're selling shirts or random widgets online? The GP is not exaggerating by saying that literally millions of people will get to payment, see they have to type in a CC number and that PP is not an option, and they will leave.

for the most part if you use EBAY you really don't have much of a choice and as a buyer ebay pushes paypal

You're forgetting the network effects, my friend. They can get away with this because they already have people locked in.

This is what legislation is for. There's always a bigger fish.

What little competition they have is worse. Credit cards are probably on the path to the root of 'evil' for this form of (seller and) consumer abuse.

There are some parallels with rules of brick and mortar banks for credit card acquiring; at least in certain markets stating that you'd give a discount for paying cash instead of card or discouraging card payments in other ways would put you on a track to get blacklisted from accepting any credit cards at all.

>you agree not to try to dissuade or inhibit your customers from using PayPal

so charging extra fees or not giving a discount to paypal customers is also not okay?

> > you agree not to try to dissuade or inhibit your customers from using PayPal

I know quite a lot of sites that tack on $1 for using PayPal. I'll also only use PayPal for sites I've never used before because buyer protection.

Doesn't this say that even when PayPal provides a sub-par service, you as a seller offering PayPal checkout, must treat and advertise them as equivalently as companies that provide a better/cheaper service?

No, it's to stop you saying 'i accept paypal and _____, but I prefer _____.'

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