
EBay to Ditch PayPal for Dutch Payment Processor Adyen - watchdogtimer
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-31/ebay-to-ditch-paypal-for-dutch-processor-adyen-lowering-costs
======
analog31
Here's what puzzles me. I have looked into Stripe, and just browsed the Adyen
webpage. Both of those services seem to require you to maintain your own
"active" server that can run server side code.

PayPal seems to be unique in being able to take payments from a passive web
page, because the customer conducts their transaction at PP's website.

This is why I continue to use PP for my tiny little business (without eBay).
Even though I consider myself reasonably tech savvy, I don't trust myself to
maintain a website that is compatible with everybody's browser, phone, etc.,
and that guarantees the security of their personal data. Moving to another
payment processor requires a quantum leap in technology that I'd rather not
keep up with. I'd rather design another gizmo.

From time to time I look around for an alternative to PP, and haven't found
one yet. I suspect that many small-time eBay sellers may be in the same boat.

~~~
clintonb
The reason for processing on your own server is so you own the entire checkout
experience. If you redirect he user to another site for payment, you run the
risk of losing track of that user. Also, the third-party’s branding may clash
with your own.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Going to a well known third party is a guarantee that my payment data isn't
sitting in a poorly secured vendor database. That's more important to me than
a seamless transaction. PayPal is most useful when you don't fully trust the
site you are buying from to have their shit together.

~~~
donatj
This. Entirely.

I used to work for a small ecommerce webdev shop. I’ve worked on sooo many
shitty insecure shopping carts over the years I simply know not to trust
basically any small website asking for my card. Completely unencrypted,
storing CVVs, sending CC details as GET parameters, I’ve seen it all. It’s
painfully common!

If a company is not a huge name, and is handling your credit card info
themselves, they are mishandling your credit card information in one way or
another. I guarantee it.

Having been through PCI compliance, it’s no joke. It’s really not worth doing
yourself in my strong opinion.

~~~
reacharavindh
This. I wish there was a fundamentally different way of handling payments.
Something like a one time hash you give the vendor that serves like a digital
check(cheque). This way, if they lose the hash they lost their money instead
of the customer's.

Handing a merchant credit card details "feels" like handing them a blank Check
and trusting them to not take more than they should because of the risk of
them losing the data.

Edit: The digital hash should say where money comes from, to who, for what
purpose, time, auth code and so on.

I live in Denmark, and they have a system of phone banking here called "Mobile
Pay" it works kind of like that. Where you transfer money to the merchant
public phone number and show them proof of sending.. However it only works for
in-person payments where you can swing your phone to show.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> I wish there was a fundamentally different way of handling payments

Seconded. At the risk of simply rephrasing everything you just said:

It's a pity the banks and credit card companies just refuse to innovate.

When I buy something from an online vendor, they should never get my full card
details. PayPal ameliorates things (you can _generally_ trust PayPal), but
really there should be no need for PayPal. The banks/credit-card companies
should provide a convenient way to authorise the payment, in a way that
doesn't trust the vendor.

Here in the UK, we already have chip-and-pin, and card readers (the kind that
show unique numbers - they're used for online banking), but we're still stuck
with the trust-the-vendor-or-use-PayPal model for online payments.

Using card-readers for online payments would also help with credit-card theft.

~~~
bionoid
> (you can generally trust PayPal)

I agree, but I also have a counterexample:

"Oh, you bought SOFTWARE?? All those pretty marketing pages about our amazing
safety and protection system do not apply to virtual products. We agree this
vendor totally screwed you over, but it's not our problem."

(this was a few years ago, may have changed)

edit: It eroded my trust in the company completely. I don't really have an
opinion of their technology.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
PayPal have certainly had a few screw-ups. My personal favourite: when they
locked $750,000 of MineCraft sales money.
[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103385-PayPal-
Free...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103385-PayPal-
Freezes-750K-in-MineCraft-Devs-Account)

At a glance it seems software products _are_ now covered -
[https://www.paypal.com/il/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-
full?...](https://www.paypal.com/il/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-
full?locale.x=en_IL#7)

------
buildbuildbuild
Potentially a great move for eBay to reign in processing fees and to
consolidate the dispute resolution process within their own platform. A large
pain point for many eBay users has been Paypal's opaque dispute process. (I
admit to bias: I lost ~$5,000 in Paypal balance while in college due to Paypal
siding with a dishonest international buyer)

For those of you contemplating Adyen vs. Stripe: Adyen is much more "bare
metal." Think more like a modern Authorize.net. Nobody comes close to Stripe's
turnkey developer-friendliness.

~~~
lachyg
(I work at Stripe.)

Glad to hear on the developer friendliness! If there are ways we can continue
to improve on that front, please shoot me a note: lachy@stripe.com

I'm curious though what you mean when you say Adyen is much more "bare metal"
than Stripe. We don't typically talk too much publicly about our underlying
infrastructure (our goal is to abstract away that [hopefully] unnecessary
complexity), but we do strive to be as close to the bare metal as possible.
(We're directly connected to all of the major card brands, and have "acquiring
licenses" in numerous markets.)

~~~
master-litty
I interpreted that as a positive nod towards Stripe. In other words, Adyen and
Stripe provide equivalent functionality but Adyen requires more work to adopt.

~~~
lachyg
I wasn't exactly sure which direction to read it :-) We often get questions
around our underlying infrastructure and how we process payments (this is what
I work on at Stripe!), so that bias is probably affecting my read...

------
parito
One of the bigger drawbacks of Adyen vs Stripe, although we wanted to work
with them a lot, is, they require a crazy reserve (in the millions) if your
model is subscription based. The logic behind it from them is, that they must
be able to refund all your customers in case you go bankrupt, and you have
subscribers left hanging without full-filled service they paid in advance for.

Although I get the logic behind it, not one other PSP requires such a huge
reserve, therefore we decided not to work with them.

Todays payments world is v competitive and players like checkout.com and many
others are v aggresive trying to disrupt stripe's dominance in this area

~~~
superplussed
Are you saying that to process recurring fees on Stripe (as so many startups
do) that you need this reserve?

~~~
phsource
Definitely not, from experience. I think the opening poster means that Adyen
needs such a large reserve, since I definitely know subscriptions-based
startups that don't have any reserve with Stripe

~~~
superplussed
_phew_ :)

~~~
parito
yes, I meant adyen, not stripe, sorry for confusion

------
cyberferret
I've never heard of Adyen here in Australia before this. I assume they are far
more Europe/US oriented? I assume they will be rolling out the new integration
world wide, so that it will become more ubiquitous? I believe Paypal has a
local office in Aus, so I presume Adyen will be setting up local offices in
most countries?

(I also noticed on the video that it is pronounced "Adi-an" where I first
thought "Ad-yen" which makes them sound more like an ad wholesaler than a
payment processor.)

~~~
dmix
I doubt Adyen is well known among North Americans either (the first market
being rolled out for ebay). Ayden is used by Uber and Netflix and some other
big names but that's mostly hidden in the background as they are integrated
directly into the platforms. Unlike Paypal which has an obvious branded layer
for all transactional layers.

I'm curious what the integration with Ebay will look like. Will users be
redirected to their Ayden accounts ala Paypal or will it be branded via Ebay?

~~~
saurabhtandon
I think the term eBay is using is intermediated payments. I think as a buyer,
you would pay to eBay and eBay would pay to seller. So should be frictionless.

------
Someone1234
If anyone else, like me, thought eBay owned PayPal:

> On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. On
> September 30, 2014, eBay Inc. announced the divestiture of PayPal as an
> independent company, which was completed on July 20, 2015.

~~~
dboreham
Yes. The Masters of the Universe decided that there was "value to be unlocked"
by spinning off PayPal. Or at least...someone's spreadsheet said there was
value to be unlocked..

~~~
jonknee
And there actually was... PayPal itself is still (after this news) worth more
than both eBay and PayPal were as a single company. Add both together and it
was an obvious win.

~~~
gscott
Strange that since eBay probably owns a lot of PayPal stock that they would
try to tank Paypal. Maybe eBay sold their Paypal stock holdings ahead of this
change.

~~~
jonknee
eBay has no stake in PayPal, that was the whole purpose of splitting it out.
Shareholders of eBay before the split were given PYPL shares on a 1:1 basis.

------
xstartup
Stripe/Braintree are a lot better than PayPal. PayPal will never take your
processing history into consideration if their algorithms decide that your
account is connected to some account with past violations. This happened when
my developer used his API keys on our production resulting in our account with
1M+ revenue/2 years (very few chargebacks if any) of operation banned. As a
small startup, it was a death sentence for our business, finding another
processor at high volume is difficult when you've no history to show!

~~~
rbobby
I've avoided paypal for ages because of their heavy handedness with freezes
and bans.

They just can't be trusted not to fuck over your business. Not
intentionally... but algorithmically. And once that happens their customer
support rarely seems to be able to fix the issue.

They just don't seem to care about false positive vendor issues.

~~~
philliphaydon
I had an issue with my paypal account in Australia where they thought it was
ok to pull money out of my credit card when it expired. This failed of course
and so they decided to just put me into a negative balance. They never emailed
me until about a year later when they threatened to send debt collectors... so
I added my singapore credit card. However I couldn’t. It would fail to accept
the card. Support told me that my card was stolen because I’m using a
singapore card on an Australian account. In the end not having an Aussie bank
account or card I was forced to open a new singapore account, send money to
the old account. Then close both accounts...

------
DrScump
(Autoplay video)

I wonder when eBay will change their rules that currently state that you
_must_ offer Paypal and cannot _mention_ other payment options (including
_cash_ ) in a listing.

~~~
quadrangle
I quit eBay (and failed to get back to a comparable experience, unfortunately)
the day (years ago) that they stopped allowing people to sell and specify
payment options that didn't have the extra Paypal fee. Forcing everyone to use
Paypal and pay the fee was obviously corrupt.

------
tyingq
I'm all for a competitor in this space. PayPal is very cocky and stagnant.

~~~
lugg
Heh, I felt PayPal has been playing catch up for years now.

Cocky maybe, certainly not stagnant.

~~~
tyingq
>certainly not stagnant

Hmm. Maybe I'm misinformed? What kind of innovative things have they done
recently? As a PayPal merchant, the UI is still a clunky mix of old and new,
and weird session errors and logging in twice, etc. We just barely got past
SHA1 certs.

------
mark-r
When Ebay first started requiring Paypal, it made sense - Paypal was clearly
the frontrunner for online payments and Ebay's homegrown effort was a pale
comparison. Also Ebay was a real powerhouse that could move the needle with a
decision like that.

Today I feel like Paypal has a lot more traction than Ebay, and this is going
to be a big flop for them. As a consumer I don't want to sign up for yet
another payment service.

~~~
edwinjm
I think the advantage of Adyen is that you don't need a new account. It
supports payment processors that are used all over the world.

~~~
Hamcha
This has its own disadvantages. My biggest reason for preferring Paypal to
Stripe or other systems is that my Paypal account is linked to my bank
account, which means I don't have to recharge my debit card (and pay the
charge fee) for each purchase. Account-less systems can't run the proper
verification to allow for that

------
thebiglebrewski
Does anyone here use Adyen? We use Stripe but are starting to consider options
that may increase conversions.

~~~
toptal
Adyen will be better if you have more consumer cards vs. business cards being
charged. Nearly 100% chance of this, otherwise Stripe may win.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Is there middleware that can route transactions based on criteria to various
payment processors?

~~~
toptal
There definitely is not. Good idea though, however the margins would be razor
thin. Possibly too thin.

~~~
dangrossman
Google "payment routing". There definitely _is_ middleware you can buy to
route payments to different processors. I've built my own for my business on
top of Spreedly. I'm not sure what you think the issue would be with margins;
the routing service doesn't have any direct costs other than servers.

------
remir
Never heard of Adyen, but it's great to see more Euro companies compete
against SV.

------
astura
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16280553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16280553)

------
amix
Wonder why they didn’t go with Stripe, but with an European competitor? This
is great for the European tech scene.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Stripe "is"/"was" also European :)

~~~
adventured
Stripe has never been European, it was always headquartered and operated out
of the US.

It'd be like claiming that SpaceX is South African.

[https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-
and-...](https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-and-story-
behind-the-founding-of-stripe/)

~~~
pulse7
And that Amazon is Portuguese...

------
jchw
They didn't "ditch" PayPal, at least not according to the e-mail I saw. They
merely made it a non-default option. It's not like you can't still use PayPal.

------
emilfihlman
Nooooo, oh good, PayPal is available till 2023.

------
Marazan
Absolutely 100% did not see that coming.

------
berkeleyjunk
Na na na na Na na na na Hey hey hey Goodbye

~~~
dang
Could you please not post unsubstantive comments here?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

