Comment by mansilla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mansilla | Hacker News Reader

I recently stated this in another comment regarding payment systems.. I wouldn't rely on just one. A merchant account through a bank CAN get suspended or put on hold if you trip any risk ratios (e.g. inquiries, chargebacks, refunds). So, indeed, PayPal does have its share of stories of accounts being suspended without explicit reason; however, merchant banks have the same power and believe me when I say that they can lock/suspend your account, and hold your funds for 6 months without ANY detailed explanation and without interest.

Secondly, PayPal does have a new API called PayPal Adaptive Payments. It's very flexible.. pre-approved payments, distributed payments (refunds also mapped backwards), chained payments (multiple source accounts for making payment). Full details on their API PDF docs (easy to understand):

https://cms.paypal.com/cms_content/US/en_US/files/developer/...

So, even if you don't feel all warm and fuzzy about PayPal.. you should have an account handy, and think about having it as a payment option on your site. Some users swear by it because they don't have to share any sensitive credit card information (including CVV coddes) with the merchant.

>>Some users swear by it because they don't have to share any sensitive credit card information (including CVV coddes) with the merchant.

I tend to be one of those .. Dispute resolution with Paypal is a much better experience as compared to dealing with, say Bank of America ... I was lucky to have had my paypal account on itunes when I had some fraudulent purchases .. No long claims process as with a bank .. The investigation and the matter was settled within 3-4 days ..

Now I've read about paypal arbitrarily stopping services without any warnings but other banks can be the same..

Interesting points. I'm leaning towards having PayPal as an option, but I don't think I'd use them as my main provider, at least not for long... Thank you both.

Bank of America is a particularly crappy bank. US Bank is marginally better in my experience, and ING Direct is by far the best. Particularly in terms of dispute resolution, US Bank was very easy to work with, and settled the matter within I think less than a week. (My ING Direct debit card number has yet to be stolen, and when a whole bunch of debit card numbers were leaked by a third party, they preemptively mailed me a brand new card along with a friendly letter explaining the situation.)

But the real solution for dispute resolution is to use an ordinary credit card and put through chargebacks on any and all fraudulent purchases. Lacking the stomach to keep a credit card I don't do this myself, but I hear chargebacks are very easy by design.

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