PayPal handles 60% of web transactions, leaves Google in the dust | Hacker News Reader

PayPal handles 60% of web transactions, leaves Google in the dust

venturebeat.com

30 pointsMRonney26 comments

I call bullshit on the headline. "PayPal handles 60% of web transactions" is not seen anywhere in the original source (which is about payment performance), and it is probably wrong.

NewRelic did collect data of their customers (and that is what they have said), but their customers do not include Amazon. You can not just take their data and claim they are 100% of web transactions (and NewRelic has not done that). I bet Amazon does make up a big percentage of all web transactions (though smaller than PayPal).

Further, Cybersource isn't mentioned anywhere. I have a very hard time believing that New Relic doesn't have any large Cybersource customers.

Agreed, the article is egregiously misleading, the data only samples that from one provider, with no explanation of how many companies and of what size and type of merchants that provider handles.

EDIT: Somehow my comment got linked to this one, instead of the parent. For the above comment, I'd add: Cybersource owns Authorize.net, and tends to use them as the gateway (my experience as an ex cybersource customer was that they had us use Authorize.net as the gateway, and CS was the merchant bank).

> "PayPal handles 60% of web transactions" is not seen anywhere in the original source

I agree this doesn't represent the web as a whole, but the top portion of the graphic does show that 60% of the "Total Calls by Gateway" were to PayPal.

And the bottom says "Data was pulled [...] from all NewRelic customers with apps making external calls to payment gateways".

So yeah, it is only at the bottom and I may give someone the benefit of doubt of not spotting that - but not if they want to be a professional journalist ;)

Google Checkout had a fatal flaw when I looked at using it many years ago. It required that a buyer have a Google account. Paypal doesn't require this. A buyer can use their credit card. They don't need to sign up for anything. This simple fact alone made me think that Google Checkout would never take off. Google wasn't interested in helping me conduct business. It was more interested in getting Google accounts.

I don't like Google Checkout for a few other reasons:

- If a transaction fails on a debit or credit card, they require you to send in proof of identity and proof of address. Paypal, Amazon and iTunes simply let you try again

- They required me to do the same to re-open a merchant account I had voluntarily closed

"Paypal doesn't require this. A buyer can use their credit card. They don't need to sign up for anything."

This is not exactly true. When a buyer uses their credit card they are promoted to add an email address which essentially creates a Paypal account for them. They may never actually log into that Paypal account and use it, but they will have a paypal account with the info they've entered. It's Paypal's sneaky way of signing people up.

I wonder how much of this is due to the fact that Google and Authorize.net are both US only and PayPal is international. Amazon Checkout is also US only.

I'd love to add another payment processor (Stripe, please!) without going through the pain of getting a merchant account, but I'm screwed because I live about 50 km too far north.

I'm rooting for Stripe, but I think whoever supports international companies first is going to have a good, locked-in by the pain of switching, advantage.

It is not true that Google is US only(I don't know about Authorize.net). I'm in the Middle East and I use Google Checkout just fine for buying stuff.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant for sellers, not buyers.

Google made such a horrible, horrible mistake by not promoting Google Checkout as fast as they could ever since it launched. It would've been a huge advantage for them and for the Android ecosystem if most Android users had a Google Checkout account right now. For years I didn't hear anything about further developments or adoptions of Google Checkout.

I think this is still the #1 reason why fewer people buy apps on Android compared to iOS, where everyone had an iTunes account thanks to the iPod. Google, too, had the opportunity to lay the groundwork for a payment system for Android years before, and they didn't take advantage of it. Now, they and their Android developers suffer for it.

I've noticed that with Android 4.0 it asks everyone in the beginning to set-up a Google Wallet/Checkout account. This should help things a bit, but only when everyone has an ICS or later phone, which will take a while. But even with this, there's not much reason for people to sign-up to Google Wallet right now. So Google still needs to make Google Wallet a popular payment method if they want to benefit from all the synergies they would get with it.

Also, I don't even know - but does it allow you to take money out of the account now, or is it still only about putting money in it and then buying stuff?

They made several other mistakes at roll out as well. I had an account with them when they launched, and I dropped them for a couple of reasons. The user interface for vendors had serious problems that were widely complained about in Google Groups, and they went unaddressed for months. Also, they allowed customers to choose a privacy option that hide their name, email, and other information from the vendor. That sounds great from a user's perspective, but when I couldn't verify that someone seeking support actually purchased my product, it made it unfeasible for me.

original source: http://blog.newrelic.com/2012/05/18/infographic-top-performi...

and direct link to the infographic: http://blog.newrelic.com/wp-content/uploads/PaymentGateway-I...

And every one of those transactions has some stupid ad for a Paypal credit card interposed between me and the merchant I'm buying from.

I can't wait until Stripe and WePay get enough traction to cut into this. It is encouraging though, to know Stripe is already the 4th most called gateway.

I've not used it yet, but I would still like to add GoCardless to this list.

https://gocardless.com/

Yeah but which one are you going to trust a chunk of your business revenue to?

PayPal without a doubt.

You hear horror stories about both (for Google e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2483609 , http://ask.metafilter.com/178634/How-to-get-Google-Checkout-...) . Granted- more about PayPal, but they handle a lot more payments for a lot more people. What nearly all these horror stories have in common is that they're gathering pre-payments/donations for some even in the future. You rarely hear it from those shipping physical or digital products.

Generally they're pretty good. They've got low fees, they work worldwide, no need for a PayPal account to pay, and you get the money quickly.

They're widely trusted by a lot of consumers as their refund policy is very buyer friendly.

On one of my sites I offer PayPal vs Fastspring as a payment choice, and well over 90% choose PayPal.

On the contrary, almost all of the horror stories about PayPal I've heard are regarding shipping physical products - largely on Ebay. Or is that not what you meant?

But the question is, can't these horror stories happen on other payment networks. If a physical item paid by credit card is disputed "not as described", its my understanding that the credit card issuer will get the money back from just about any payment network. If you want to avoid such horror stories have a clear no hassle return policy.

EBay horror stories are usually transactional based on buyer/seller conflict. (including fraud) In those cases, Paypal is just the party stuck in the middle.

On the positive side, at least there is a chance of an amicable resolution with PayPal. 10 years ago, a sketchy buyer would be sending you a fake money order.

I put a $3500 PC on eBay a few years ago, and was left holding the empty bag. That sucked pretty good.

Can someone fix that part about online transactions?

I'm not terribly familiar with them, but is there something wrong with escrow services, or did you just not use one?

I think most people opt not to because it drives up the price of what they're selling "unnecessarily", and I think that's fine for smaller transactions, but any time you're talking 4 figures, I think it makes sense to use one.

I'm pretty sure eBay rules forbid sellers from requiring buyers to use escrow - they require all sellers to accept Paypal directly as a form of payment - so that's no use as protection against fraudulent buyers.

I think it's really strange that Amazon isn't on this list. The title should be changed to "60% of New Relic customer web transactions are Paypal".

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