PayPal’s updated acceptable use policy [pdf]
paypalobjects.com
paypalobjects.com
> If you are a seller and receive funds for transactions that violate the Acceptable Use Policy, then in addition to being subject to the above actions you will be liable to PayPal for the amount of PayPal’s damages caused by your violation of the Acceptable Use Policy. You acknowledge and agree that $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation of the Acceptable Use Policy is presently a reasonable minimum estimate of PayPal’s actual damages - including, but not limited to, internal administrative costs incurred by PayPal to monitor and track violations, damage to PayPal’s brand and reputation, and penalties imposed upon PayPal by its business partners resulting from a user’s violation - considering all currently existing circumstances, including the relationship of the sum to the range of harm to PayPal that reasonably could be anticipated because, due to the nature of the violations of the Acceptable Use Policy, actual damages would be impractical or extremely difficult to calculate. PayPal may deduct such damages directly from any existing balance in any PayPal account you control. [emphasis is mine]
As I read this (not a lawyer) PayPal claims that any violation of their acceptable use policy will result in an a̶u̶t̶o̶m̶a̶t̶i̶c̶ charge of $2500 because that represents the "minimum estimate" of the damage your violation causes them.
On top of being completely a completely unacceptable policy, the idea that any violation costs them at least $2500 is complete fucking horseshit, if you'll pardon my explicitness. There is absolutely no way I would ever do business with PayPal as a seller under any circumstances, even if it was my customers' preferred method.
The people it actually takes this steps against will be those who violate some secret internal policy, presumably. They don't enforce it against every violator because the number of violators means it would destroy their business.
Any service could say that you’ll have to pay $2,500 for violating the TOS if they want to. Instagram could say it, but nobody would give the money to them willingly and since it’s a bullshit clickwrap contract they’d have a hard time finding a sympathetic court to inflict it on you.
The problem is that PayPal says it and then doesn’t just shut your account down unaccountably with no human recourse they take thousands of dollars of your own money when they do it, and you’d have to fight them in court for it. It’s a fait accompli situation.
No it’s not remotely ethical.
If property is the subject of a reasonable dispute-- e.g. whether a contractual term applies-- whomever is holding the property has the upper hand. Especially if the amount of property/money is small compared to the probable cost of litigation and especially so if one is unlikely to recover legal fees.
In any case, I agree with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33063096
> This is nonsense,
ORLY?
When PayPal closes people's accounts and keeps the money, in what percentage of cases do you think the people eventually get their money back?
My guess is far fewer than 10%.
Stubhub has a similar policy where you automatically get charged the entire sale price as a penalty (which goes entirely to Stubhub, separate and in addition to them refunding the buyer) for cancelling an order. Even if you do it right after sale. Most platforms like eBay or Amazon will give you some kind of strike for that, but I'd never heard of anyone attempting to fine you money beyond refunding the buyer. I cancelled the credit card so they can't charge me, but apparently they send people to collections for this. IANAL, but I think I might be able to argue that it is unreasonable liquidated damages, especially since their help site refers to it as a "penalty." PayPal is clearly trying to use the right language here, calling it an estimate of hard to calculate damages.
I think these liquidated damages in consumer contracts are really a terrible idea and getting more and more common with online companies. Apparently Zipcar will charge a $50 late fee if you are even one minute late, whereas other rental firms charge something like $12 a day and wouldn't even think of counting minutes.
I agree.
> and getting more and more common with online companies. Apparently Zipcar will charge a $50 late fee if you are even one minute late, whereas other rental firms charge something like $12 a day and wouldn't even think of counting minutes.
I'd hope customers catch on, and competition takes care of this.
You mean they all realize it’s a great idea and implement same fees?
That is the last business Avis will ever get from me. And ideally from some of you guys reading this too.
Section 5 is new. It covers posts, content, etc that PayPal finds objectionable.
To understand this in context, say I’m a website based business that posts conspiracy theories about JFK and UFOs. People pay for exclusive content via paypal.
If I get labeled as misinformation on 300 posts, I could owe PayPal a minimum of $750,000 (300 * $2,500). I’m not saying PayPal will do that, but that appears fair game given the terms being provided here.
To me, this is what the document suggests.
They take the money, and there is nothing you can do. If you spend enough money on lawyers, eventually they would give you the money back, but you'd lose on that deal too.
Ethically and morally it's abhorrent, it degrades the power of the law, but they can get away with it. Fuckers.
They should rename themselves to PayUs.
Effectively, they can charge anyone using PayPal $2500 per incident of the following violation after Nov 3, 2022 (why the title was changed I don’t know):
> involve the sending, posting or publication of any messages, content or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing or objectionable, (b) depict or appear to depict nudity, sexual or other intimate activities, (c) depict or promote illegal drug use, (d) depict or promote violence, criminal activity, cruelty or self-harm (e) depict, promote or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation etc.) (f) presents a risk to consumer safety or (financial) wellbeing, (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation or are unlawful, (h) infringes the intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights of any party or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication.
Say I run a UFO spotting website with 300 posts on UFOs. I have a steady stream of revenue of $5,000 per month from subscribers and use PayPal to collect payments; have been for a decade.
If paypal labels my website and all its posts as misinformation, given the terms as I understand them I could instantly have $750,000 frozen or withdrawn from my PayPal (and bank account? - unclear). That's 300 posts x $2,500 minimum fine.
So you're not allowed to sell a significant amount of art? I'm not talking about artistic nudes, I'm talking about a lot of Renaissance style works (e.g. Birth of Venus[0]) or Art Nouveau (e.g. By the River of Tuonela[1] -- which also isn't child porn), which I think everyone agrees aren't pornographic in nature.
> (c) depict or promote illegal drug use,
Are Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson promoting weed? Cheech and Chong? Harold and Kumar? Do you incur a >=$2.5k fine for selling H&K Go to White Castle DVD to your friend?
> (e) depict, promote or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation etc.)
Can we not sell old Disney cartoons collections? Or Loony Toons? What about more modern things like Django Unchained? Does this apply to books? That sure rules out a lot of important books.
I get wanting to be moral, but these rules are so broad it feels like PayPal is just saying "Don't use our service." You can make Nazis, fascists, Klan members, pornographers, and sex traffickers violators of your service without making people that sell historical art, popular music, and books violators. I can't imagine how someone approved this language. Is there context missing?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus#/media/File...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau#/media/File:Gallen...
This one is truly outrageous - "depict"??? There goes 5/6 of human culture. I seriously doubt you can find much literature or cinema that doesn't "depict [...] hatred or discrimination of protected groups or individuals". Especially not in any kind of socially conscious writing. Goodbye, any portrayal of MLK. Goodbye, any movie about gay rights.
Of course the policy as written is outrageous, dumb, and silly even by clown world standards. You couldn't make Roots or many other thought-provoking works today with a proper reading of that policy.
However, the real goal of this policy probably isn't to dictate actual policy into stone tablets for the masses to follow. The real goal of the policy probably is to give PayPal carte-blanche to do whatever the hell they want to dictate culture and impact politics without getting sued.
If you become annoying or a political adversary of PayPal's management, they can find something to ban you and hurt you with.
If you technically violate the policy, but aren't their opposition, I'm sure you will be ignored.
Yes. The missing part is that when every customer is technically violating one or more policies, they can pick and choose who to target without further justification. Like discretionary traffic enforcement, they're not going to "fine" everyone who sells a Snoop Dogg CD, but they can keep the option in their back pocket as a pretext.
By some measures, PayPal itself does. Should PayPal ban itself?
(for example, anecdotally from an acquaintance in Germany a few years ago, there are some flows that can and will, without the appropriate checks, lead to a customer ending up in a debt to PayPal, and they have some of the worst debt collectors in this regard)
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29935515
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32739950
If it wasn't obvious, cherry-picking bits and pieces from various jurisdictions isn't legal; PayPal deftly deflects any legal challenges to their various dispersed entities making them essentially untouchable if you don't have unlimited resources.
If anyone is interested, in the EU, this is their playbook:
- Ignore all communications unless it's a C&D from lawyers
- Deflect responsibility to PayPal Luxembourg.
- They have, or have had literally 90% of LU lawyers retained, meaning your case will not / cannot be accepted by the majority of LU law-firms due to conflict of interest
- Deflect onto the CSSF (Luxembourg Monetary Watchdog)
- Respond to the CSSF that the complaining company is not based in Luxembourg, which results in the CSSF concluding that they are not the competent structure to rule.
- Case closed, your funds have been stolen, and PayPal has artfully dodged the relevant regulatory bodies.
A society that rewards people and organizations for placing themselves above the law is a society on the way down.
In this instance the CSSF is rigorous, but ultimately rigid. They have clearly defined boundaries and protocols. The problem is that companies such as PayPal exploit this to their benefit - which means that they ultimately use the watchdog entities as peons to execute their illegal practices.
Luxembourg seems like an even shadier place than Switzerland for money laundering -- the "legal" kind. There is a stock exchange in Luxembourg that is used for all kinds of back door listings to avoid regulation in other jurisdictions. It is is /similar/ to money managers using Caribbean Islands (Cayman, BVI, etc.) for their business registration.
It took us literally a month of calling LU law firms until we finally found one that didn't have ties to / being the tentacles of PayPal.
Credit cards - yes you might lose 20% of your customers - but can u find a payment processor to handle your business?
EDIT: the story from your other comments is pretty hair raising!!
I disagree with first hand experience. LU is a money laundering state, simliar to Switzerland, or akin to Ireland for dodging corporate taxes. The EU would be a better place if it removed/cancelled all of this shitty economic behaviour!
Okay so before I say anything that ends up putting my foot in my mouth, lemme just check something real quick…
http://web.archive.org/web/20001018034024/http://paypalsucks... well, this won't work…
http://web.archive.org/web/20001206210200/http://paypalsucks... neither will this…
http://web.archive.org/web/20010215013627/http://paypalsucks... ah yes, roughly the first time it went online.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200707092456/http://paypalsucks... …aaand the last successful crawl before hosting expiration/domain reparking.
Well, I can now confidently say:
We've known that for literally decadeS.
Edit, in fact, come to think of it, that—almost certainly—means:
People've linked PayPalSucks.com in the comments on Slashdot _since before 9/11_.
NOT a criticism, more an observation.
And I thought the practice of scaring me with "unusual activity on your account", then locking me out until I am sending them all the required proof of identity (photocopy of ID, proof of postal address, ..., that they demand and as a private corporation will handle and store and review this very sensitive set of data some sort of way by who knows who.... ).
When I sent what they asked for and asked them about the nature of the "unusual activity" and if they reported it to the relevant authorities (possible breach of a monetary account) the response was a big fat nothing. I thought to ask them to provide the evidence on the "unusual acctivity" after this as I plan to contact local authorities myself to report the hacker of my account or whatever the "unusual activity" prompting strict measures required was - must be serious and illegitimate! - but decided not to. Does not worth the effort.
Rather I closed my account for good and not looking back. I will not rely on them this way, I thought. And from the above list I believe I was right. I did not regret this so far in the past ca. 5 years.
Bye Bye PayPal.
It falls under the CSSF's jurisdiction:
"PayPal has the status of a Luxembourg credit institution and is under the prudential supervision of the Luxembourg supervisory authority, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (the "CSSF"). The registered office of the CSSF is located at L-1150 Luxembourg (Luxembourg)."
The terms of use for paypal have a mandatory arbitration clause that all disputes should be submitted to binding arbitration. This isn't necessarily bad. I've gotten clients money back every time so far. You just need to know what strategy you are pursuing. There are two ways you can go about it - File for arbitration or file in small claims court. One good thing about arbitration is that under the terms of use, and to a certain extent procedural rules, that paypal has to pay the costs of arbitration up front if you ask them. This means you do not have to pay anything for your claim to be heard. Here is the main problem at first - due to the procedural rules for arbitration, any party can have the action dismissed at their request if the claim is cognizable in small claims court where the plaintiff resides. Small claims court usually handles claims up to 5000 and there are certain types of claims excluded. To get around this, you need just to state your claim is worth more than 5000 to prevent your case from being dismissed . The small claims route works as well. Paypal is unlikely to send an attorney to represent them. You'll get a judgment but then will have to collect on it. Also you'll have to pay some costs up front. The reason this is typically so easy is because the reasons paypal gives for acceptal use policy violations are typically not grounded in any facts. The theft is so transparent that they are unable to defend the action in any serious way.
I mean it's obvious that is what the number is and represents.
If they ding 1,000,000 people with that who are more likely to pay than not, it's a sweet ~$2.5 billion.
Is this simply a new revenue stream tactic since they're arguably at their peak and aren't going to gain more market share? Maybe they're just trying to milk the remaining users for as much as they can while they see PayPal being a sinking ship?
They didn't really even try to stop it in the early days. You could setup an injectable immunomodulator merchant account in under 10 minutes with Square. People started entire pill mills using Square and Paypal. It was wild!
Similar to Turo who allowed the vehicles of their users to be used by weak KYC'd users. You never knew who was actually driving the vehicle.
I had loads of interesting conversations with Ex San Quentin prisoners, was riveting to listen to some of them talk about the crimes committed with all the fintech startups. Everything I thought I knew was wrong.
Paypal/Square Mafia's used cheap pension money of VC's to take their vig.
I'm assuming this is used as a cover since it explains away "drug paraphenalia" like needles.
CashApp was a haven for criminal leverage of the homestead act-types.
Go hit the street, talk to ex-cons and white collar criminals, your view is simplistic and lacks depth of on the ground reality.
How do you arrive at that conclusion? How does it compare to other means of payment?
I don’t doubt that it is used for criminal activities. But I doubt that the scope is extra ordinary.
> conversations with Ex San Quentin prisoners
I heard Maddoff was involved with NASDAQ. Does it imply NASDAQ is a fraud?
https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full (archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20221003014408/https://www.paypa... )
lol
Oh sh* am I out $2500? \s
...
They didn't have a speech rule, it's a new speech rule.
What would you have titled it?
"$2500 for new speech rule" seems accurate. I could have suggested it's a new "speech rule", but it's not clear what the violation costs would be.
Flee PayPal
Do not use any service that uses Plaid.
I have been a long-time Venmo user and have refused to ever link my account through Plaid. Starting a couple years ago, Venmo begin to intermittently claim they "Lost the connection" to my bank and forced me to link via Plaid. I always refused and the problem eventually went away. Now, I cannot send money to anyone via Venmo. It always gives me the same error message and asks me to link via Plaid. Extremely dark pattern.
Otherwise, I agree with plaid being bad.
There's a nonzero chance you will hit some kind of risk/fraud system based on amount too.
Wire is much better but frequently $50-100 per transaction as a fee.
Just for comparison, in Germany, bank transfers are free and take 1-2 days, for a fee or free (depending on the bank) you can do instant transfers taking seconds.
(If you don't explicitly have overdrafting off, so that it would just fail your transaction instead of letting it go through. The default setting may have changed in the last decade due to law but I remember these scenarios vividly)
$0 balance
+$20
-$1
-$1
-$1
Within a day or two of each other won't necessarily be positive $17 balance.
It could easily become:
$0 balance
-$1 (overdraft fee $40)
-$1 (overdraft fee $40)
-$1 (overdraft fee $40)
+$20
= negative $103 balance
Banks make a lot of money doing this to poor people. The financial class is full of super-predatory behavior.
Gaining access to a credit union was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
And that's varying by bank too. I can only send $1000 per day total by Zelle (except a "day" is much longer than 24 hours usually) and some accounts are silently rejected as recipients. My girlfriend has to pay the rent (I pay my share to her over multiple days) because I can't send to my landlord at all and even if I could, the amount would be wrong. She has neither limit.
Regardless, avoid PayPal and Venmo at all costs, as there are reasonable alternatives for many use cases. They have avoided regulation more traditional financial service providers operate under (banking regs), so using them is to invite suffering.
Zelle is a trade name of Early Warning Systems, which maintains databases of what you do in your bank account (checks paid and deposited, monthly balances, etc.). I would assume the banks that have native Zelle integration are required to become members and share this information anyway.
https://www.earlywarning.com/about
If your threat model is that you don’t trust your bank with your deposit account balance and transaction history, that is hard to mitigate. I don’t necessarily trust my bank, but I do know what regulators to call for recourse when they misstep.
Where can I find more info about the '8 months' estimate? I hoped RTP would be useful to me, but the only bank that allows consumer accounts to use their RTP network is Chase. I hope this new network also doesn't fall short of the promise.
Some American banks participate in a network called Zelle, which does allow instant electronic funds transfer. But, Zelle is available exclusively through your bank's phone app.
I've seen plenty of stores selling stolen merchandise and pirated goods via PayPal so these terms of use make a lot of sense to me.
So if Transferwise and PayPal are equally bad, you might still want to give your business to the smaller company?
Actually, it is not that straightforward. One should check what kind of customer service is available, where are they located, who has access to the account and information and yada yada yada.
PayPal is a much safer choice than Wise in this aspect.
(I found Transferwise easier to deal with than PayPal, but I never had any dispute with either.)
My personal experience with both Paypal (we are forced to use) and Wise is that Paypal does is setup completely against users. There are many hidden fees, no guarantees and they just exploit their position. For example if you are based in country with different currency than the one you are in (somebody sends you USD and you use EUR) Paypal will automatically convert the money to EUR with their outrageous fee (basically taking 5% just on top of all other charges). There is no way to avoid this, you cant send money to USD account even if it’s in country you are based in.
Wise on the other hand saves people money. The fees are visible. Conversion rates are better than what most banks give you. Their services evolve (like you can get debit card now).
Paypal and Wise in my experience cannot be further from each other.
If PayPal is actually going to enforce this, it will obviously have to remove Netflix, Steam, any book store from their platform, since they run terribly afoul of most of the above.
In many European countries, you can send money for free directly between banks in seconds without even as much as a fleeting thought that there are private companies doing the same service.
• Some are asking about whether this rule implicates off-platform speech. This is not 100% clear to me. It says "you may not use the PayPal service for activities that...involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that [are prohibited]".
This seems to be far too broad as it relates to the transaction itself, as one of the prohibited categories is "depict or promote illegal drug use". So if you sell a DVD of Trainspotting, then you are using the PayPal service for activities that involve the sending of content that depicts illegal drug use. Get ready to be fined $2,500.
You also could not use PayPal to sell a DVD of the movie 42 (about Jackie Robinson), because it "depict[s] discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race...)".
It seems absolutely bonkers to think that using PayPal for these transactions (or the many other examples imaginable) could result in a $2,500 fine.
It is unclear how broadly PayPal can sweep in off-platform language. That is, if you have a website that sells all sorts of things, can they claim that you are "using the PayPal service for activities" that break their rules? The fact that this is to be determined "in PayPal's sole discretion" does not bode well for a seller.
• This is framed as "liquidated damages", which IIRC are not allowed in some jurisdictions. Liquidated damages basically means "we're just deciding on this amount as a deterrent, not because it relates at all to the harm actually suffered by any of the parties". In general, liquidated damages are disfavored because they discourage so-called "efficient breach" of contracts. This happens when A agrees to paint B's house for $500, but then A gets an offer to paint C's house for $10,000 on the same date. A knows that B can find a replacement painter for $1,000 even at the last minute, so he decides to breach his agreement with B and is willing to pay the actual damages (the extra $500 that B would have to pay) because it is efficient for him to do so, given his ability to earn much more money painting C's house.
• This amount that PayPal can deduct under this TOS is not limited to $2,500. That is just the liquidated damages piece. They could claim other, larger damages, though I can't really imagine what that would be. Harm to their reputation? Seems hard to prove.
That said, the policy is obviously not to set out clear and objective criteria that can be understood by the other party or a 3rd party adjudicator, but to create confusion and ambiguity and allow arbitrary and selective enforcement.
I'm not a lawyer, but I know from personal experience that California disallows liquidated damages for rental late fees that exceed actual damages (prorated interest). Plenty of landlords illegally collect late fees, but you can either not pay or sue them in small claims and recover the cost. There may even be some kind of statutory punitive damages for putting illegal late fees in a contract as there is for illegal non-competes, but again I'm not a lawyer. While California government is dysfunctional in many ways, at least the law there favors employees and renters more than any other state that I know of.
I always laugh when people talk how easy it would be to make money as a landlord, as if bad tenants don’t exist at all.
The reason I was researching this is because Stubhub's support website actually describe their liquidated failure to complete transaction damages as a "penalty," which seems to be a major mistake on their part.
what in Allah's name is wrong with people these days, it's as if a mind virus has rotten all brains
> are otherwise unfit for publication.
This is the internet, everything is publishable.
How can users + merchants put pressure on these companies to get their head out of their ass? Maybe a mass complete withdrawal of funds will damage their cash reserves? What if we actively start badmouthing them to users and send them to competitors?
I am willing to dissuade my game users from using paypal and letting them know about the changes by adding a relevant disclaimer before the payment step. Anobody have a relevant text?
I sell stuff on Gumroad as a hobby (synth presets) and initially only had credit card payments via Gumroad.
Maybe a year or so after I started my Gumroad shop, a user complained they couldn't pay with PayPal. Not sure why I had assumed this was available... but anyway, I enabled PayPal. Now probably 50% of payments are done with PayPal and I'm selling more than before.
I'm also getting more "random" customers that I didn't get before. Before, probably 95% of sales occurred at the peak of a product launch. Since I added PayPal I get a couple of random sales every week with no promotion at all. And it's been like 6 months ago since I launched my last product. My guess is, I'm getting more impulse buys with PayPal.
In my work there was pressure to enable PayPal when Netflix became popular (and they accepted PayPal, but not direct debit, so all the kids had PayPal).
These days it seems to have faded. As a payment option, it is really confusing to a lot of less technical people, and most banks here (Canada) offer credit-debit cards by default (except Desjardins).
They barely have a functioning bank in their town, they're definitely not gonna be able to pay their local bill with whatever fad blockchain currency for a while.
So I do all the work to buy and transfer crypto and hope it doesn't lose 20% of its value while I'm doing that because Elon Musk had a bad day and shit-tweeted. They what? Drive a few hours to work out where to get cash from BTC to pay their real world bills?
I had a friend in that situation once (sudden emergency), and I used snail mail to send one of those pictures of Benjamin Franklin that are printed by the US Treasury. It worked fine, no internet needed, no crypto, no blockchain, and no scam artist coin exchanges were needed to convert the Ben Franklin back into cash, since it was already cash. It beat Bitcoin in almost every regard, as far as I could tell.
I guess all of these too could theoretically be replaced with crypto depending on your need and situation. With something like a wire you are placing the transfer in the trust of your bank, which is secure but can take multiple days and can cost more than an ETH transaction.
Most mail arrives fine but mail theft is still a massive problem and rising, it is one reason you are advised not to regularly send cash in the mail.
Domestic wire transfers are almost instant, while international ones can take overnight.
Doing anonymous and untracked payments of significant amounts at scale is sure to tick off regulators. If your ETH transactions are non-anonymous and tracked, it's hard to see any superiority over ACH or wires. It's a solution looking for a problem.
I don't regularly send cash in the mail but I've done it a number of times, with no losses that I know of. A typical reason is that I don't feel like going to the hassle of getting a money order. I feel like sending a personal check is riskier than sending cash, since a stolen check reveals my account number, leading to possibly unbounded loss. I generally do use money orders if I might need proof of payment afterwards, or if the amount is high enough to worry about. I've sent $100 cash on a couple of occasions but more typically it's $10 or $20. Even that is an occasional rather than a frequent thing.
Domestic wires are slow in many countries, in the order of days, and costly[1]. My ETH transactions are done in 30sec, fees are usually less than a dollar, and they are pseudonymous - primarily only known to my CEX and government. The transaction is traceable while in transit and proof of payment easily found.
To me, it sounds like you are writing off ETH transfers without having actually used them.
[1] https://smartasset.com/checking-account/how-long-does-a-wire...
Fwiw, I live in an apartment, and any letters are delivered to my mailbox, which has a lock. There is not much likelihood of letters getting stolen after delivery. Packages that don't fit in the mailboxes are left on top of the mailbox, and those are much more exposed to getting stolen.
Yeah I'm not speaking for other countries, not all of which have functioning payment systems. ETH (current version) does sound more efficient than BTC.
Use DAI or any other stable coin.
It is a good point about integration. In all fairness, the merchent in said city could be convinced to accept block chain currencies -- but that's another discussion.
It really appears that a lot of people have strong opinions on something they know doorknob about?
USDC. DAI.
It seems like there is a lot of misunderstanding between what constitutes "a cryptocurrency mature enough to currently use on a regular basis" and "the speculative shitcoins/memecoins being propagated to the masses".
No one wants to actually be responsible for credit card processing, but they want to reap the rewards of it. So PayPal is what you get.
As a consumer though, until crypto offers a compelling reason for me to use, it's nothing but risk for me.
When did this happen?
> Speaking to Canada’s CTV News on Friday, a representative for the top 10 North American financial institution revealed that “TD asked the court for the acceptance of the funds. They were raised via crowdfunding and deposited in personal accounts at TD.” Approximately $1 million is the money raised for the Canadian truckers and not refunded by GoFundMe, and the other $0.4 million is made up of direct donations. The bank said it was applying to entrust the funds with the authorities in the hope that “These may be used to distribute them in accordance the donor’s intentions and/or returned to those donors who requested refunds, but whose eligibility cannot be established by TD.”
I have heard this claim before from people about freezing protestors accounts, and it all comes down to either 'someone proposed it but it never happened' or 'some article that mentions something but further digging means it was either a private action or something benign.'
What does this have to do with the government using extra-judicial powers?
How did you come to this conclusion?
Sorry, but I see this time and time again, people complaining about PayPal/Stripe/etc.
Not, no biggie, we’ve got an interesting in theory, largely impractical in practice alternative, crypto!
What PayPal is doing is entirely consistent with that. In a free society, suppliers are free to decide whether they want to do business with you, and under what conditions. And you are free to make the same choice.
(Of course, we'd hope that in a free society competition would take care of providing suppliers that offer conditions that customers can agree with. But there's no guarantee of that.)
Institutions need to protect the freedom of their users. You're talking about a completely different kind of freedom.
Competition is one solution to the problem, by avoiding incumbent institutions, but it often fails and it's not the only solution.
For example, (many) Germans expect to be free to drink alcohol in public or eat Kinder Surprise. (Many) Americans expect to be free to shoot guns, but can live with bans on public drinking.
The product they’re selling is insurance and peace of mind to buyers and increased sales because of that to sellers.
Anything you invent that does this will become PayPal even if it’s backed by crypto.
Technical merits aside, volatility is considered a negative feature of a currency. At least until that gets sorted out the "Not Paypal" options are what I will stick to.
Are merchant accounts so otherwise difficult to get ( Global Payments was dead easy ) that people are still resorting to Pay Pal only? Can someone help me understand how Pay Pay is even still relevant?
Ive been living without them for ... a decade? Maybe more? I'm fine over here.
>Ive been living without [PayPal] for ... a decade? Maybe more?
Heh, no you haven't, they own Venmo.
>Can someone help me understand how Pay Pay is even still relevant?
Because they're popular, and you're still their customer.
I see vendors at local farmer's markets / craft shows / etc using PayPal's card reader to take credit cards in person.
Those that use a different brand of reader often still accept Venmo for payment, which is owned by PayPal.
I occasionally still use PayPal to pay if I'm shopping at a site I don't know if I should trust.
I only use them when I have to; I recently had some money waiting for me. When I tapped “accept the money”, PayPal wanted me to sign up for a crypto account with them (!). Later I noticed that there are two identical “accept money” dialogs. The one to send the money to my bank account was down the page, out of sight.
I wonder how many have been suckered into signing up for a crypto account with PayPal because of this?
1] As of Oct '22, PayPal's the only gateway that enables me to pay for Hetzner hosting and Medium.
On paper, both support credit cards and they worked fine till '21. But some bureaucratic craziness over banking and data sovereignty rules here really messed up credit card and recurring payments. Now they work with some gateways but not with others. I can't use my CC directly with Hetzner but I can use that same credit card through PayPal.
2] I subscribe to some newsletters published by people living in N. America. PayPal's the only option they provide.
3] I sometimes write or code freelance for US clients. PayPal's the only way to get payments from most of them. Some even have policies that say don't write for us if you can't receive PayPal payments in your country.
My impression of the global payments ecosystem is that it's a precarious system held up by bubble gum and shoe strings. There's no transparency, too much bureaucracy, and often no customer support. It always feels like I'm just one step away from being totally excluded from the world and my livelihood and hobbies cut short overnight.
Considering the images of its founders, it's ironic that the much-hated PayPal has been the only one that's worked consistently over 2 decades and made efforts to remain inclusive. They even stuck through some unfair regulatory bullying a few years ago when it seemed like they may permanently exit my country.
I know from discussions that people in other countries in the global South have it much worse. Probably, many are already excluded completely. I don't see the ecosystem as a whole doing anything to be more inclusive.
If people in the payment ecosystem are laughing at PayPal, you should probably know that I think all of you are even worse.
Their document says "If you create a message ... unfit for publication". This is a blank check to persecute you (take $2,500 * n) just for non-criminal speech.
Then there are other firms that do similar things, like ClearView AI compiling dossiers on people's online activity and social media posts.
Yes, colloquial usage of "credit scores" in the US typically means FICO scores, but the more general usage that's used to describe China's system as a "credit score" can also describe very similar systems we have in the US, as well.
Yet.
Wouldn't be surprised if they add some sort of ESG into the mix before long, in the push to address climate change.
Eat too much meat, fly/drive too many miles, protest for the wrong cause, or like the wrong tweet, and there goes your score.
Such "credit scores" are not just limited to finances in the US, a lot more information than most would be comfortable with is made available to interested parties.
Also, we've had credit scores for decades now.
Also, the reason why the social credit system is bad isn't that there's a record of your past bad behavior, it's that it's tied to vague violations like "spreading false rumors". Credit scores aren't perfect, but at least they're tied to a specific bad behavior (failing to pay back debt), and you can demand removal if the other side can't produce evidence of the debt.
Turns out the webstore was a scam front. The "seller/scammer" gave me a real Fedex tracking number, but from some other order. It was to my zip code, but it was showing that it was delivered before I ordered, the weight was way too low, the origin was some other business.
The truly concerning part is how PayPal handled it. I wrote a detailed explainatio of the scam, pointing out what they did, and how the contact info on the seller's website was fake. Their automated dispute system instantly declined my dispute merely because the seller/scammer gave them a FedEx tracking number that showed delivery to my zip code. The Paypal website suggests you can file an appeal, but that button was greyed out on my account. If you call, they will literally refuse to talk with you since the "dispute is settled."
The worst part is that this exploit in their dispute system was been public knowledge since at least 2019. You can find all sorts of posts on reddit, paypals own forum, etc. And they still use their broken automated system with no appeal.
Fuck PayPal, that is fraud on their part. They are knowingly aiding and benefiting from fraudulent transactions by rubber stamping it with a broken AI.
I was lucky that I used a credit card with Paypal since I could just dispute the charge with my credit card company. But had I used a linked checking account, I would have been out 1000 dollars because Paypal sided with a scam artists against me in situation where there was no genuine dispute that I was scammed.
Buyer beware on Paypal.
> involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable, (b) depict or appear to depict nudity, sexual or other intimate activities, (c) depict or promote illegal drug use, (d) depict or promote violence, criminal activity, cruelty, or self-harm (e) depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) (f) present a risk to user safety or wellbeing, (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation, or are unlawful, (h) infringe the privacy, intellectual property rights, or other proprietary rights of any party, or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication.
It absolutely does apply to off-platform messages. If, for example, you have a website or other service that takes payments via paypal, it applies to anything said there.
So I’m deleting my PayPal account.
What do they consider “obscene”. Is it me saying ‘piss’ ‘shit’ or ‘fuck’? Why can’t we have clear guidelines with these things.
If it's new... I would never consider doing business under those terms. Some of those clauses are vague enough that you're all but agreeing Paypal can just take $2500 from you whenever they feel like it.
Sure hope they never have any financial issues where $2500 seems a lot more immediately valuable to them than your future patronage.
Why would anybody want to do business with Paypal now?
You don't get a choice, there aren't that many alternatives that people trust.
It is part of the user agreement you're required to sign in exchange for being allowed to use their service. It might not be lawful, but you'd have to sue them to find out.
> Are they going to send debt collectors after them if their paypal balance is negative?
Probably not, but they'd be within their rights to do so.
> Why would anybody want to do business with Paypal now?
Many people think that their activities will never, under any circumstances, be considered obscene or otherwise objectionable by PayPal. Other people, such as myself, will continue to use it, but will take precautionary measures in order to reduce my exposure to this change.
I don't think such stuff flies in other jurisdictions than the US. Under civil law (ie Europe), what the law dictates defines what you can and cannot do. And contractual agreements can't override that. I very much think that that agreement is not applicable in Europe.
Neither of those involve any kind of arbitrary decision related to speech by the bank.
The core of the matter is in the difference in between the civil law (descends from Napoleonic code) and common law (descends from Anglosaxon medieval common law):
In civil law, the contracts in between parties cannot override the law in any way. So if the law says that you cannot do any such thing like fining a customer based on what the person says (literally there is no law that allows that), then Paypal putting a clause in an agreement in between Paypal and the user does not mean sht. The law is the law. It does not allow such discriminatory behavior and it will not happen.
In common law, everything is a mess: Laws, statutes, precedents, interpretations, all enter the stage and make it a matter of whose coffers being more deep. Paypal may put such a clause in the agreement. And the user accepts it. This, may, or may not be binding on depending the relevant federal laws, state laws, statutes, precedents and other sht that may come into play. If there is not a specific law that forbids this and that law does not take action without explicitly being specified in the contract, Paypal may get away with this practice. IF, however, the user takes Paypal to court to 'challenge' that in court, gates to a whole hell of common law opens, as explained earlier. Again, it ends up being tied to whose coffer is deeper.
Hence the difference in the behaviors of US companies when dealing with the users in the US and the users in Europe and rest of the world.
...
TL:DR; Common law is a feudal, medieval mess that should have been left to fade in the annals of history a looong time ago...
But courts have sometimes ruled that terms are "unconscionable", even if the user agreed to them. If PayPal starts enforcing this on things that are not clearly over the line, they're going to get sued, and it is not clear that they will win. (They're likely to get sued even if they enforce this on things that are clearly over the line, because this is the US and that's how we roll...)
Some services marketed toward privacy-conscious users have started accepting Monero, such as Mullvad VPN [2]
1. https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/faq/#asic-resistance
https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-close-m...
and banks[2] can charge merchants chargeback fees for processing the transaction requested by the consumer.
[1] https://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/products-and-services/refund...
[2] https://www.westpac.com.au/content/dam/public/wbc/documents/...
with a carve out I haven't chased down for
> Chargebacks are not like the dispute resolution services offered by organisations such as eBay or PayPal.
Knowing PayPal, they might actually think about enforcing it. Could that even possibly hold up in court?
- introduces a newspeak rule.
- encourages others to report violations
What's the next step. Gulags?
I don't even know! Please don't report me!
"...that, in PayPal’s sole discretion..." [Reordered but from their docs]
Wonder how they feel about this. Wonder if they see any connection between their rampant disdain for a culture of free speech, and where we are now.
Everyone should delete their PayPal accounts, and encourage friends/family to do the same. Shocking business practices, and they only continue to do business because they've often been the status quo, but since dropping them I've never once wished I still used it.
Such a dark pattern making cancelation difficult.
i used it once or twice in the past, they scammed me on currency exchange fees so i was done then and there. this company and their business is insanely outdated. how are they still around?
PayPal added this point (coming into effect Nov 2022) and there are large fines for each violation:
> involve the sending, posting or publication of any messages, content or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing or objectionable, (b) depict or appear to depict nudity, sexual or other intimate activities, (c) depict or promote illegal drug use, (d) depict or promote violence, criminal activity, cruelty or self-harm (e) depict, promote or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation etc.) (f) presents a risk to consumer safety or (financial) wellbeing, (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation or are unlawful, (h) infringes the intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights of any party or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication.
But it turns out he's directionally right that the United States policy is getting this new language. https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/US/en/accepta...
Remember what happened to Notch? (Minecraft author)
Actually, being a bank may mean they are legally not allowed to implement stuff in these terms , as it would be discriminatory, and giving arbitrary fines is certainly not allowed. Anybody know something about this?
The danger of filtering financial transactions through what is effectively a political-correctness proxy is that it inhibits the only practical means we have for peaceful social change.
Can you use PayPal to raise money for pro-life causes? For a political candidate who supports restricting transgender surgery for children? What about a news outlet that publishes out-of-mainstream opinions?
When the balance of power shifts in the United States, there will be backlash against things like this, and it's not going to be pretty.
In case you're reading this and think that you don't have to worry about this because this would only affect the right, keep in mind that as recently as a few decades ago LGBT was considered taboo and talking about it would get you sanctioned in society. If something like this was enacted it would be even harder to change the status quo regardless of the side you're on, and most certainly in a way that hurts minorities.
I didn't get that at all
> there will be backlash against things like this, and it's not going to be pretty.
Both of those are certainly, to me, a "polite" implication that they see this action as being part of a path towards something other than "peaceful social change" that "will not be pretty" during the "backlash to things like this".
What sort of un-peaceful social change in backlash to this that you think will involve Paypal that won't be some sort of danger to the employees there? The direct implication is that this is removing a non-violent option for OP to cause change, and that their thus-violent backlash to this will not be pretty.
Sure, it's not naming specific people at Paypal who should be harmed, but this reads very much like the sort of vague pseudo-threats that are common these days that skirt the line of being an actual "threat" that is legally problematic, but still conveys intent to cause concern to those the poster disagrees with.
It's not much less blunt than "people who did this are going to be first against the wall in the revolution"
Do you really think that if the GOP win the House, Senate, and Presidency, they won't scrap the filibuster to ban abortion nationwide in 2025?
You're right that setting new precedents is a dangerous strategy, but showing restraint against an opponent that doesn't follow the unwritten rules (and even some of the written ones) is just asking to be taken advantage of, like a losing player in the Prisoner's Dilemma.
Yes. I'll bet you 10 fake internet points that there are zero attempts by the GOP to scrap the filibuster.
Anyway, to give more context, a bill to ban (some) abortions was introduced to the Senate[0] this year, and although Mitch McConnell has said he wouldn't scrap the filibuster for such a law if he had a majority[1], Biden has raised the stakes by saying he would support a carve-out to ensure the availability of abortions[2]. Senators are already discussing who should succeed McConnell[3], but his term ends in 2026, so perhaps I was hasty to suggest we'd see a change to the filibuster in 2025.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/13/sen-lindsey-graham-introduce...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-09/mcconnell...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/30/biden-supports-fili...
[3] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/12/mcconnell-successor...
Narrator: and then there was
This feature is almost the entire value proposition of PayPal.
“I sent 1BTC where is my car?”
“Lel weak hands!”
In this cause it would be treated the same way as if you paid for the car with cash.
Dispute resolution refers to a buyer and a seller who used the platform to transact a good having a dispute over the payment. PayPal can arbitrate such a dispute (in principle - your mileage will definitely vary) and either refund the payment to a defrauded buyer, or protect a seller from a buyer seeking to abuse the system.
Blockchains are entirely unable to help with this problem, as they are only a payment layer and have no information about things happening outside the blockchain itself, unlike PayPal.
You can implement an escrow smart contract where a trusted third party controls when the money is released to the seller or refunded to the buyer.
It’s just that most people using blockchains haven’t needed or wanted this feature given its costs and centralization. Especially when transacting with smart contracts and digital assets: the domain asset you buy isn’t arriving damaged upon delivery.
If you really want this - it is not farfetched to assume a blockchain based PayPal replacement would offer some dispute resolution for special cases such as fraud, theft.
It would be good to dissect the source and where this is originating from within the company.