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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

The comparison to Paypal is funny. Paypal has decided that I don't exist, or, if I do, that I'm somehow ineligible to buy things through Paypal using my credit card.

Buy. Things.

If your site does payment processing through Paypal then, through some accident of account processing or technology or the history of my account, I can't use any of my 3 payment cards to buy what you're selling, because Paypal believes it needs to (for reasons passing understanding) link directly to my bank account before any card with my name on it can be used through Paypal.

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You can purchase through Paypal without logging in, there's a little text link at the bottom of the purchase page under the "sign in" box. They'll also taunt you if you enter a [mandatory] email address that matches a known account, but this is also skippable.

Paypal demands a login when I use any of my cards. Then, when I log in, it demands that I verify my bank account.

It's a trick. The verbiage on the page strongly suggests you have to log in, but there is a little link or something to skip it. It has been a while since I bought through paypal, but I always skipped it because it was so much more of a hassle to log in.

If your credit card is in their system then the only option is to login.

No, I think this means PayPal recognizes tptacek's CCs and forces a log in. Even with a new card, perhaps they'll just base it on the name and refuse to process it without an account login.

Even with a new card? Are you sure? That'd be surprising, given the overwhelming duplication of first name/surname combinations.

I think you're referring more to the "jlee" and "rsmith" combos than the "tptacek" ones.

Paypal fairly recently switched from "login encouraged" to "login mandatory".

I bought something this morning without having to login..

Did you ever dispute a charge or have an incident with PayPal? They will block users forever (or a long time) I've seen the error code on the other side. Basically "PayPal doesn't like this guy due to a past issue so he's not getting through"

weird. PayPal actually suspended my account the first time I sold something, but I just called them and they fixed it. That's why I said PayPal > Square.

Oh hell, anything that gets in the way of swiping or typing a credit card loses sales. Also, it's really intrusive without much WIIFM.

I thought that what guest checkout is for, even though it's a per-merchant configurable option: https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/About-Business-Archive/G...

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