posted on September 14, 2000 07:10:25 AM new
Maybe I missed something, but it is my understanding that Paypal allows you to carry a business AND a personal account, and the personal account is completely free.
If I don't want to pay fees, I simply use my personal account (or direct my customers to send payments to it). Of course, I will not be able to take advantage of the premium services offered but a business ultimately needs to make money to survive and how many other payment services out there provide the range of services that paypal does at what I suspect are quite reasonable costs given credit card processing fees are usually in excess of 3% per transaction?
If I look at some of the fee-based competitors they are charging over 3% per transaction and don't offer as much functionality as paypal. Furthermore, if I look at many of the remaining free competitors, I notice that they have slots in their system for fees. It is only a matter of time until they start charging (some have already started, witness ecount.com -- they used to be free) because they will need to make money to survive. Furthermore, these other systems are beginning to severely limit one's ability to move money given the high level of fraud that exists. At least paypal is trying to deal with the fraud without limiting my access as some of the competition has done. The invective that is directed towards paypal is at times is a bit harsh given the alternatives out there.
I am not trying to promote paypal.com, but let's face it, I would much rather receive an electronic payment than wait around for a check for my auctions and it is my experience that paypal has been the most innovative and has kept the costs very low for the business account (much lower than maintaining one's own merchant account). When I consider the alternatives to these payment systems (e.g., inconvenience of manual payments, bounced checks, customer fees for buying a money order/cashier's check which ultimately lowers the bid I am going to get because these are additional costs the customer has to consider when placing the bid), my opinion is that paypal provides one of the best services out there.
For a comparison/discussion of other payment services, see the thread "List of Payment Services"
posted on September 14, 2000 04:26:28 PM new
I tried to get a personal account for buying and upgraded to the business for my WEB. I was told (since I only have one bank account) I can ONLY have one account. I was going to register different cards for each account, BUT I was told THAT was not the problem. The problem was there could only be ONE account per verifiable bank account. If I had a personal AND a business account that would be TWO on the same bank account and I could not do that. So those who have both, how did you do it???? I really don't want to open up two bank accounts right now. I have enough trouble keeping up with one!
posted on September 14, 2000 06:38:53 PM new
Hi all:
I'm back from making rounds on other boards. There are clearly a lot of concerns and questions about PayPal's recent reminder message. I can’t answer all of them in one post, but I want to address some of your most important concerns.
We have always said that PayPal would be free for person-to-person payments. When people started using it for e-commerce, we evolved as a company, expanded our features, and in June created Business Accounts (for companies) and Premier Accounts (for individual entrepreneurs). We told our users that we wouldn't force people to upgrade, but that didn't mean it was OK for business users to violate our terms of use and conduct their commerce with a PayPal Personal Account. That's why we sent out an email in July that reminded business users of our policy.
While 250,000 of our users did understand what our terms of use required and decided to upgrade to or open a Premier or Business Account, a number of users either honestly weren't aware of our policy or else chose to ignore it. Since we assume that most people like to play by the rules and hence wouldn't expect PayPal to continue to subsidize their auctions with free credit card processing, customer service, and fraud protection, we sent the login page as a reminder to our active users. That's all it was, just a reminder of a policy that we've publicized before -- not a new one. It wasn’t meant for someone who occasionally sells personal items online; it was meant for those who are part-time or full-time sellers. We're sorry if the page seemed abrupt or ominous to some of you. It certainly wasn't intended to be. We were just trying to make sure that you all knew about our existing "business use" policy.
We also wanted to be straightforward and notify you that we're considering a new policy to enforce our terms of use. We hope we won’t have to, but if we do, we’ll strive to be fair and we'll be sure to announce the new policy through emails and content on our website at least two weeks before we implement it. Contrary to what has been reported on some threads, no policy has yet been determined; we have not decided on a specific transaction limit, or even whether this would be the best approach. We can say this: We don't intend to surprise anyone by automatically upgrading their account or shutting them down. We may have to limit costly functionality on Personal Accounts (like the ability to accept unlimited credit card payments), but everyone will have a choice, and as we’ve said all along, no one will be forced to upgrade.
Please understand that PayPal can’t subsidize large volumes of credit card transactions -- especially since we'll be giving a big part of the float back to our users starting next month in the form of income on funds left in your PayPal account. So, if you're selling goods to make a profit, we're asking you to play by the rules and upgrade to the account that is most applicable to you (either Premier or Business). We want to make online payments safe and easy for everyone, but we need your help to do this.
If you have thoughts or concerns on what our policy should be, please email us your suggestions (mailto:[email protected]). Since I can't possibly respond to every specific comment or question on the boards, please also use this email for any questions you may have. I will make sure that the whole team (including management) sees your comments, and we will try to answer every question as soon as possible.
Thanks again for your comments, and for caring about PayPal. We appreciate your feedback.
posted on September 14, 2000 08:00:15 PM new
sulyn, I am pretty sure you do need 2 bank accounts. If you didn't, when you tried to initiate an electronic withdrawal from your personal account, when PayPal tried to send money to your BUSINESS checking account (I think that's the one you verified, right?), it would probably be bounced back because the names wouldn't match. I can't have personal money sent from my PayPal account to my business checking account because the names are completely different.
posted on September 14, 2000 08:54:55 PM new
PayPal Damon (Damon Billian) - For reasons I don't understand, you continue to misrepresent the facts involved in this situation.
A gross mistake was made by your company.
You now how the choice of correcting that mistake and moving on or continue to present half truths(or should I say half lies).
If you feel half truths best serve your interests then I presume you will continue these "But you don't understand posts"
Just remember that there is a record of what has been said, what has been done and where/when it took place.
For example your statement "When people started using it for e-commerce..." what a great surprise this must have been. Gee, who was it promoting free acounts on AW and providing logo's for personal accounts to use in their auctions?
There are more inconsistanceies in this post of your but we'll leave that for later.
Your statements will all be part of the complaint filed with the FTC and thru them to the appropiate banking regulators. I have discussed this with both my Congressman's office and the office of both Senators. They have all offered to track the complaints progress thru government regulators
Your further statements will be added to the the file.
Maybe we'll meet when you visit Wash.,DC to testify.
posted on September 14, 2000 10:37:32 PM new
All right Ray. You should forward the information to Chairman Gonzalez of the banking committee; he is very astute and agressive. I think Congress would be very interested in knowing the lack of oversight and regulation of on-line financial services companies such as PayPal. This is not a joking matter, I really think they would be interested in this. Also, why do other financial institutions have to undergo exams at least every year and PayPal nothing! These practices would not have been accepted at a legitimate financial services company.
