
PayPal Launches PayPal.Me, Request Money Using Your Own Personalized URL - ourmandave
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/01/paypal-launches-paypal-me-a-simpler-way-to-request-money-using-your-own-personalized-url/
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praseodym
Yesterday's discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10152224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10152224)

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xutopia
I'm using Paypal to pay for whatever I can right now and once my account is at
zero I'm never using the account ever again. You see moving my funds to my
bank account was impossible and no one at paypal would explain it to me after
numerous calls.

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mangeletti
Looks like just a small charge to signup:

[https://paypal.me/signup/5/](https://paypal.me/signup/5/)

I'm joking, of course.

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ceejayoz
Yeah, 'signup' should probably be in the blacklist. Someone grabbed /support
too - [https://www.paypal.me/support](https://www.paypal.me/support).

edit: And [https://www.paypal.me/help](https://www.paypal.me/help)

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jcrei
Sadly for me, it says it's not available in Estonia. Even though the article
mentions that they (unlike Venmo) should be available to users outside US and
US credit cards. Oh well, guess I just have to wait until some Estonian start-
up steps up in this field.

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dijit
Estonia is so ripe for startups, I'm surprised Europeans all over aren't
flocking to it.

Cheap (by most European standards) intensely skilled workers who speak fluent
English in a country who's government has the best investment in technology in
the world.

From what I read last, Estonian workers (especially those who work in tech)
are fleeing the country due to lack of jobs- it'd be nice to give them a way
of staying home.. too..

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gavreh
Isn't this a copy of Square Cash [https://cash.me](https://cash.me) ?

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oddevan
Definitely the unaddressed elephant in the linked article.

The mobile-first design, the '.me' address... all of this points to an answer
to Square Cash.

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tempodox
Has techcrunch become complete cancer now? My Safari keeps freezing trying to
render that pulp.

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manicdee
Does Ghostery help reduce the load death?

It reports 14 trackers, ads and other crud items.

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haytjes
Cool. Just created my own:
[https://www.paypal.me/100th/1](https://www.paypal.me/100th/1)

(Just for the test, I'm gonna give every 1000th person back the total I
received like this. That should be something around $1000. Not sure how the
conversion with $€ works. I'll let you know when/if that happens. Everything
above the $1 I consider as a donation, but not required ;) )

Update: after some consideration adjusted to $1. Seems better as test.

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kang
Paypal woke up after so many bitcoin startups offered this
feature(changetip.com notably). Too bad, they didn't fix their other problems
first.

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loftyal
It would be much better if the payer could just use his credit card and email
instead of having to sign up, people would be more inclined to use. The payee
could send it to anybody (because they don't have to worry about if the payer
has an account), and the payer because they don't have to sign up.

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fiatjaf
They should focus on getting some working dashboard and integration for SaaS.

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edent
Maximum limit of just under a million £$€ in the URl.

[https://www.paypal.me/edent/999999.99](https://www.paypal.me/edent/999999.99)

If you're feeling generous

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thejosh
I wanted to see how it looked, enjoy your penny (and probably my details).

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edent
All I can see is your name and email address.

I've refunded your penny :-)

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ryanlol
For me the page just displays random Chinese text, not a very useful service.

[https://i.imgur.com/MoNUKWo.png](https://i.imgur.com/MoNUKWo.png)

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tijs
For me it was in french while i live in the Netherlands (where we speak
dutch). Somebody needs to get a fancier IP db maybe.

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ryanlol
I think all browsers send the accept-language header now, mine is set to en-US
and the site completely ignores it.

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jonknee
Your email address was already your own personalized URL...

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chinathrow
Great - now you pay somone and PayPal makes another 3% of the volume. We
really need to replace the PayPal/CC fiasko out there.

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mahouse
And who's going to give you a warranty on your money? Bitcoin? hahahah

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chinathrow
I haven't mentioned Bitcoin at all. No, the fee structure tied to CC (and also
PayPal since it's largely based on CC) is so multi-tiered, that it needs to be
redone without up to 5 tiers (PayPal, Visa, Issuing bank etc) making money on
a transaction.

EFTPOSin Europe e.g. has way lower transaction costs and there is absolutely
no reason why this shouldn't apply for credit card transactions. Some european
countries have been regulating the visa/master card interchange fee already, I
hope there is more to come.

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tacos
PayPal is free for friends/family when you use a bank account instead of a
credit card. And a variety of US banks already allow you to transfer money via
ACH for free, even between banks.

EFTPOS actually originated in the USA in the 1980s. In the NYC area it was
known as "NYCE" and centered around ATM sharing.

Citibank didn't join and that one drunk friend who'd insist on walking eight
blocks in a shady neighborhood at 3am to save a buck pretty much killed the
movement.

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joeblau
It looks like someone didn't read Paul Grahams essay: Change Your Name[1].

As far as the service, I feel inextricably linked to PayPal right now. I used
PayPal through the early Ebay years and while I don't have any money in my
account; It still pays for my Uber and I have a few friends who haven't
updated to Venmo yet. There are also a few items which I've purchased online
where I use PayPal as a proxy so the company doesn't get my CC info. I'll
probably end up setting up an account just to hold my name, but I doubt I'll
use it much.

[1] -
[http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html)

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gtCameron
The first line of the linked article is "If you have a US startup called X and
you don't have x.com, you should probably change your name."

Pretty sure Paypal owns paypal.com. Also pretty sure Paypal is not a startup.
Not sure how this article is relevant.

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mangeletti
And the extra ironic part is that PayPal literally even owns x.com...

