
EBay to Ditch PayPal for Dutch Processor Adyen - thinkloop
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-31/ebay-to-ditch-paypal-for-dutch-processor-adyen-lowering-costs
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nolok
Paypal is in this weird place where the whole set of reasons why it's so
successfull with buyers is exactly why it is hated by sellers.

As a buyer, I will definitely pick it over any other option, and will pick a
seller offering it over one that doesn't, even if the price is slighly higher.
That's in fact pretty much the only reason I grown to use Agoda over Booking
99% of the time, and why I now use mostly Qatar Airways for my Europe <-> Asia
travel.

It's safer (I don't give my CC to anyone else, they can't lose it nor give it
so whoever, and they have very good buyer protection procedures in place), and
it's more practical (don't need to find my CC and fill the numbers, don't need
to ensure it won't hit my CC monthly spend limit as it use "prelèvement" by
default [charge me from my bank account directly, bypassing my CC]).

As a seller I hate it, integration is terrible and fees are terrible. But
anyone who has them and tries to remove them knows it translates to lost
business. On a websites once we simply moved paypal from the default to one of
the side option you could pick and it lead to significant lost sales in A/B
testing.

~~~
chatmasta
This is a good point. But it seems like the advantages of PayPal from a buyer
perspective are derived from a subset of its features, rather than the core of
the product itself. It is possible to create a business that masks your credit
card, for example, without also creating a de-facto bank and merchant
processor. See Privacy.com for an example.

~~~
nolok
Yeah until you get to the "show the physical credit card used" fraud
protection that is now common, "I used paypal" works but a "fake card" that
the merchant didn't know about ? Good luck missing your plane if you don't
have agree to let them take a card print before boarding.

I mean, I agree overall, but I also like the fact that Paypal is registered as
bank in the EU (luxembourg) and has to follow all corresponding legislation.

(might be different in the US, where depending on the state it's either
registered a bank or a much less refulated "payment processor")

~~~
chatmasta
It’s still a “real card.” The name and billing address are the same; it’s just
the number that changes. AFAIK (not affiliated) Privacy.com integrates with
MasterCard in the same way as prepaid gift cards or employee expense account
credit cards do.

Regarding presenting your “real card,” doesn’t using PayPal cause the same
problem? Paying for airline tickets is clearly a special case. Also, are you
sure you even need to check in with the same card you paid with? Usually those
systems that ask you to “swipe your payment method” are only reading your name
from the card, and combining it with a confirmation number to look up your
reservation. I know for a fact this is how trains in the UK do it, because I
can buy a ticket with PayPal, and then use any credit card with my name on it
to collect the ticket from the machine.

~~~
nolok
I should point out again that I'm Europe (France) based, so this might be
different than the US. Note that when I say swipe the card, I mean putting the
card and typing your 4 digit pin.

> Regarding presenting your “real card,” doesn’t using PayPal cause the same
> problem?

No because when a marchant offer paypal, they know it, and they know you paid
that way in advance.

There is a very big difference between "you paid with a system that doesn't
have a physical card, you knew it, we knew it, and we specifically allowed you
to do it", and "you used CC payment but you don't have the corresponding
physical card, we didn't know or approve this, and your explanation is that
you use some sort of service online that hides the real card".

Considering this is done to prevent fraud prevention, I'm sure you can see why
this is very different.

> Also, are you sure you even need to check in with the same card you paid
> with? Usually those systems that ask you to “swipe your payment method” are
> only reading your name from the card, and combining it with a confirmation
> number to look up your reservation.

Hotels, airlines and others are using it as a fraud prevention and they
explicitely require the card, of a proper copy of it to be present. They often
explicitely state it on the checkout page, and on the printed receipt. The one
time I had to go around this, Emirates phone support asked me to have a
printed copy of the card AND a printed copy of the national id card of the
card owner at check-in.

With that said, they didn't actually check any of it, and this was before 3D
secure (Emirates current official policy is that you don't need those
documents if paid with 3d secure). But still, I would rather be safe than
being blocked at the airport.

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none80
We used to use Paypal as payment processor but when someone opens a case on
whatever issue then all of our TOS goes to the bin. Paypal dont care how you
want to run your business since they enforce their policy and "after careful
consideration" their automated system refunds the money to the buyer. Paypal
dont care if the buyer abuses our company's TOS or what was the issue. They
just refund anything even after 6 months. (I wear my shoes off in 6 months)
They dont care how the item has been returned, in what condition etc... they
just refund. This is why buyers just love it and exactly this is why we got
rid of them and started to use Stripe. With Stripe we can decide if something
was faulty or got broken or the buyer just want to abuse our TOS. Stripe dont
involve and let us control our own business. Yes... we have tons of customers
turning away and we have lost revenue. We knew this and we 100% accept it. We
use Stripe for 3 years now successfully and nobody tells us what money we MUST
return. We sell £300-£800 worth of parts, tools. We rather loose revenue than
accept "received empty box" claims. We the seller pay the Paypal fees but
Paypal's policy built on buyers protection only. So no thanks... we would
rather give our fees to someone else (Stripe) who actually let us run our own
business. For us Stripe = FREEDOM Good luck to Paypal but we will never deal
with them again.

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Nursie
Will it be cheaper?

As someone who has sold a few items in the £300-700 range over the last few
years (car audio equipment and graphics cards, mostly), I've been surprised
and annoyed at all the fees involved. Paypal takes a 4-5% cut, then a couple
of weeks later ebay will mail you asking for their 10% too. And then are
listing fees etc.

Unless there are special promotions on it feels like a real gouge.

~~~
nawtacawp
I thought you were inflating numbers to make a point here. Now, I'm shocked --
I just did a fee calculation for a $500 sale with $15 shipping cost:

eBay fee: $51.5 PayPal fee: $15.24 Total: $66.74

That is too much IMO. I don't sell anything on eBay, but I didn't know it was
that high.

~~~
Nursie
Yeah I was shocked the first time. And the second. I try not to use it but for
technology stuff it's about the only game in town.

For more household-type items I prefer gumtree.

~~~
jazoom
Which, unfortunately, is owned by eBay.

~~~
Nursie
It is, but crucially I can list stuff for free, and get the cash in person -
they get nothing from me :)

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tonyedgecombe
As an occasional Ebay seller this looks like good news, the fees were
excessive for the poor service provided.

~~~
Manicdave
Is Adyen cheaper than Paypal in terms of fees?

~~~
hazelnut
Yes, that’s one of the reasons. With PayPal you also pay for the brand

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sharpercoder
What's the story of Adyen?

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toptal
Adyen is ~$10b startup and actually significantly larger than Stripe. They
don't get a lot of press because they have a terrible name, most likely.

They are significantly better for large consumer facing companies than anyone.

~~~
mraison
What's so terrible about the name? (genuinely curious, I may have missed
something as a non-native English speaker)

~~~
toptal
It's hard to pronounce and means nothing.

~~~
com
Adyen means something, just not in English. Their website says it means
“again” in Surinamese, probably because a previous business of theirs was
rolled into what is now Worldpay.

Ad-yen doesn’t seem too hard to say for me.

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toptal
Amazing.

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thinkloop
Serious question, what is paypal? Why don't people just use credit cards
directly? Isn't paypal service hard to reach compared?

Stripe/square take care of pos, venmo/bitcoin handle peer-to-peer, what is
paypal's future?

~~~
matthewmacleod
_what is paypal?_

PayPal is an abstraction later for accepting payments from different sources.

 _Why don 't people just use credit cards directly?_

From the consumer's perspective, PayPal serves as a platform that stores their
payment and shipping details in one place, meaning that in order to make a
purchase from a new vendor they don't have to faff around with credit card
numbers and shipping details on every purchase.

From the vendor's perspective, PayPal is significantly less effort to
integrate with than a traditional payments gateway. It means that vendors
don't store card details themselves, which means compliance is easier. I've
not used it as a vendor for years, but I understand it also provides things
like basic order management.

 _Stripe /square take care of pos_

Yes, but PayPal existed before either Stripe or Square, and provides
substantially the same service.

 _venmo /bitcoin handle peer-to-peer_

Not directly – a payment processor of some kind is still needed to fulfil the
same use cases. Not to mention the extensive other difficulties with those
systems.

 _what is paypal 's future?_

Pretty much the same as the other options. Don't get me wrong, PayPal has lost
some of its moat and the Stripe API in particular is much nicer, but it
provides substantially the same services as competitors, so there's not much
reason to switch unless the offering from elsewhere is more attractive.

~~~
dk7
In addition, PayPal owns Braintree, which is direct Stripe competitor.

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nukeop
I know somebody who worked at Paypal. There was a simple scheme they used to
do on a regular basis. Once somebody has accumulated a sufficient amount of
money on their account, they would freeze their account and tell them to send
incredibly detailed documents confirming the sources of all incoming
transactions. Completing that request would take the average user a long time,
then afterwards Paypal would take a couple of weeks "analyzing" the documents.
In the meantime, they were free to handle the frozen assets as they saw fit,
such as investing in stocks. After those few weeks, they would (not always)
unfreeze the account and pocket the investment profits. If there was anything
wrong with the documents, they would extend the period the account was frozen
or simply keep the money for themselves in some cases.

~~~
joosters
I call bullshit. Investing frozen cash into stocks sounds far too complex, and
you can imagine so many pitfalls (how the hell do you fudge the accounts for
missing cash if the investing loses cash?)

Show some evidence, op.

~~~
dithering
It seems reasonable that they're investing their float. It seems _possible_
they're creating Byzantine regulations in order to increase that float. No
evidence, but it doesn't sound complex to me - money is fungible, and all
that.

