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Comment by iwr | Hacker News Reader

So what's wrong with setting up an account with a payment processor rather than paypal? The processor only provides the interface, but does not actually hold money hostage or have other arbitrary restrictions.

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you must have much better credit than I do. Every payment processor that will do business with me 'holds' 25-50% of my money for a certain number of months even when you aren't doing something suspicious.

Now, last time I looked was a few years back, so things may have changed, but this was my experience last time I had a merchant account... Paypal isn't any good, but they are the best of a bad lot, as far as I can tell.

25-50%? I never saw that rate, and I've dealt with a LOT of processors. 5-10% is common. It's what the banks hold in case of chargebacks.

this was a few years back... so it's quite possible that I am misremembering. I do remember that it seemed like quite a lot, and these were the days before authorize.net was willing to hold the credit card numbers for you... between those two things, I decided that at the time, paypal was a much better option.

You're not misremembering at all. It depends on the market you're operating in. These holdbacks still exist.

I operated in the high risk space from 2002-2007 and we never had holdbacks that high. 5-10% was normal.

From which country ?

Define 'high risk' please ?

I was paying money, not receiving it.

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