PayPal to add $20 inactivity fee in Canada | Hacker News Reader

PayPal to add $20 inactivity fee in Canada

mobilesyrup.com

9 pointsworanl9 comments

Inactivity fees are bullshit. The marginal cost of generating a periodic (edit: electronic) statement for an inactive account is essentially zero anymore, as is the cost of storage.

While I'm at it, minimum balances on plain old checking and savings accounts are also bullshit. All of these things are just excuses to take money away from people, primarily those on the poorer end of the wealth/income spectrum, who are the least able to afford it.

Inactivity fees are worse than that. You're not using the account? Maybe you're not paying attention to it, so we'll try to siphon some money out while you're not looking.

The least cynical take is that they're a charge because you're not letting them make money from you in other ways, and even that's totally indefensible. They don't have a divine right to make extra fees on your account.

I have cancelled my account years ago. Paypal doesn't offer anything in the market and I don't use a single website that requires paypal exclusively for payment.

Something is really wrong with a company charging you for inactivity. Maybe it would help them more trying to find out why their customers don't bother using paypal anymore rather than some short term gains in inactivity fees.

Well, I'm glad I never deleted that recurring subscription to bill myself $0.02 every month. I thought it would be a good indicator in case ever stopped working and a real person tried to make a payment. Now it's a 0.02/mo 'service' to keep my paypal awake.

> This fee was also introduced in the U.K. back in December 2020

Wat?

I mean, I use PayPal fairly frequently, so this doesn't apply to me - but I'd be incredibly pissed off to note a random £20 (whatever) charge on my account from a service I didn't use!

How is this even legal?

If you account balance is 0 you are not changed anything. They don’t charge your bank/card. They will only take the charge from any PayPal account balance.

So most users of PayPal who use the service to purchase things won’t ever see a charge as in the UK because a refund will go back to the payment source not your PayPal account balance.

If you receive payments via PayPal and let it sit in the account for a year without making a balance transfer or using the balance to purchase anything, then they will charge kicks in, if you have less than £20 in the account then they will charge what is in the account.

I’m not saying I agree with this policy, I think it’s BS too, but it’s not like they will bill your debit/ credit card or bank £20 because you stopped using them (eBay while still supporting PayPal tries their hardest to get you to use their own payment processor over PayPal, so it’s pretty easy to not even notice you are not using PayPal for purchases).

As for “how is this legal”, it’s in the terms we agree to when using their service. They can add inactive account charges, as they could argued that they make their profits from purchases and payments from those interconnect fees. Having a dormant account isn’t making them money (I’ve seen credit cards have similar terms, use it or get charged).

Again I don’t agree with the policy, just answering.

Makes sense, I suppose. Still seems a little perverse to charge someone for holding their money and, presumably, profiting from inaction even if only in some small way.

I rarely use it anyway, so I'll terminate my account and only use it in "guest" mode if that's the only payment option.

Businesses are getting desperate to levy fees and penalties. But guessing PayPal's intelligence has a solid reason to ask for it.

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