Slashdot Mirror
Micropayment Wars Are Over... PayPal Wins?
Snocone writes "Cringely's latest column asserts that PayPal is now sufficiently dominant that it is pretty well certain to achieve de facto standard for micropayments over the net. Goes into the history of PayPal and why their model works where no one else's has. Even if you don't agree with him, there's some good insights into digital currency infrastructure to be found here." I now use paypal to pay my girlfriend back when she picks up dinner and my roommate pays his share of the rent using PayPal. Its great... although with the $5 they pay in referrals, plus the $5 they pay to new users, ya gotta wonder ... (if anyone wants to use me as their referral, thats cool *grin*). its actually making the Tipping Jar concept practically feasible. I mean, can I tip artists a few bucks when I enjoy their MP3? Can I tip a few bucks when I enjoy reading someone's website? The potential to change a lot of things is within reach.
I have no problem with needing some kind of verification but I am not going to give them my bank account number (and implicit permission to EFT funds from it at any time "if I approve it.") As of today PayPal has become useless to me forevermoe as I have reached my $500 spending limit, which can ONLY be lifted if I supply my bank account number.
about the last place I'd trust for online transactions is a traditional bank with an aging, conservative board of fatcats who think Msft & AOL are state of the art and have to hire some tortured soul of a hack to implement their stodgy idea of what online financial services should be. PayPal sure speeds up my eBay addiction :))
Ch-Chuck on remote assignment
A database of 10 million users and their credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc. all in one place. Sounds like a juicy target for hackers. Credit cards may offer some degree of protection but how responsive would your bank be if you told them that you posted your checking account number on the Internet and someone used it to empty out your account.
Come on, if this sort of thing is going to work, then surely the Slashdot crew wouldn't mind taking the first step?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Anyone know?
That was one of the coolest damned things I've seen in a long time - beaming cash between each other's Palmpilots/Visors, and then cashing in on the next Hotsync. Honestly, that was so godamned cool I can hardly even stand it that they cancelled it - we *NEED* more services like this in this world.
Anyone got any details why they cancelled it exactly? The first thing that comes to mind is some sort of legal issues with regards to banking regulations of some variety, or maybe it just wasn't being used.
With all the new Palms on the market now, and the growth of that market going the way it is, Paypal should really bring Palm/Payments back...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Go talk to Citibank UK and ask to open a US dollar account. They'll then ask you if you want a US dollar cheque/check book and a US dollar credit card to go along with it. They'll also ask whether you want your US dollar account to be based in London or New York (ie, it affects clearing times on cheques).
These are private accounts.
No charges for moving money in or out, or moving money between your GBP and US dollar accounts (or AUS, or NZD, or whatever you ask them for).
Citibank is tres groovy.
...j
Perhaps money should either be a reward for nothing, or for everything. Anything in the middle, and the decisions people make in their life will be guided by money. If, however, you create something artistically and no matter what the medium is you get paid, then money has not influenced your decision to create what it is you are going to create.
As someone who is very pressed for time and needs to stay focused, it would be good to throw away all the money making activities and work on the art that I would love to spend all my time on. This is not possible as it doesn't make me any money, currently.
"From what I've read a large part of the reason many credit-card accepting sites won't take customers outside the U.S. is the enormous rate of fraud they experience when dealing with non-US customers. Fraud per se wouldn't be so bad if some of these countries had law enforcement and judicial systems that were, to put it bluntly, honest and effective. "
Wrong! It's nothing to do with law enforcement in those countries. Try blaming the credit card pseudo-monopoly/cartel of Visa, MasterCard, etc. Merchants always foot the bill when a CC charge is questioned. The CC companies have not implemented a consist way to verify a credit card, and thus the merchants cannot check up on CCs. The US uses a system different to elsewhere. I moved to Canada, but I often cannot use my US CCs to buy online from the States. The reason is I have an international address and the US computer systems cannot cope with that. In addition to this, international treaties would be required so that fraud commited in the US (and vice-versa) can be prosecuted overseas.
"Couple this with the clusterfsck that comprises the banking and currency transaction laws and bureaucracies of many non-US countries and you have some serious barriers to entry. Some of this can be blamed on currency speculators who have in the past used electronic means to clobber currencies which caused the affected countries to enact laws which hinder EFT. "
This is just crap too. What the hell has the exchange rate, etc got to do with it? I recently did a large cash advance on my British credit card. The amount was over $7,000, so the local bank could not guarantee me the exchange rate (fluctuations would have cost them a significant amount)... instead I had to agree that I would accept the exchange rate at the time the transaction completed, a few days later. Fine. I understood it could cost me more, but that just goes with the territory.
"Instead of blaming everyone for being anti-{your country here} instead ask yourself what your country could do to make their economy more accessable so the paypals of the world CAN set up shop in your country. "
As far as Western countries go, everything is pretty accessible. Personally, if I were an overseas customer, I wouldn't want to do business with a US company such as Paypal as the US is rather lacking when it comes to privacy legislation.
Huh? I certainly don't behave any differently in a restaurant to anyone else. I'm polite to the waiters, and expect the same in return. At the end of the evening, I'll decide whether a tip is justified or not. If you haven't been refilling my drinks, the chances are I'll decide not. If you want to lose your tip through such behaviour, there's little I can do to stop you...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
No! Paying them is their employer's responsibility, not mine. No one is forcing them to do the job. If they don't like the salary, they should find a better paid job. I'll tip if they've given good service, but 15% is way over the top. In fact, the tip shouldn't be related to the value of the meal at all. The waiter hasn't given me better service because I ordered the £50 lobster instead of the £5 burger. At the end of the day, though, it probably just comes down to cultural differences. In the US, you're seen as rude if you don't tip (hell, there's even people in this thread that tip pizza deliveries!). Here in the UK, though, I see it as rude to expect a tip unless they've done something to warrant one.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I see this as a good thing for amateur artists. It allows unambigous proof that somebody appreciated your work. The value of this positive feedback is probably more than the monetary value of the micropayments.
If you take a look at the site, they only offer the service to people living in the USA. Sounds like it has a really good chance of becoming the de facto standard for micropayments over the net. Right.
--
Niklas Nordebo | nino at sonox.com | +46-708-405095
What's your experience been like with it (I assume you use it)?
I'm somewhat interested in messing with e-gold, but to me (reading their site) it looks like you'd eventually get bled to death by storage fees for the metal (your balance slowly goes down as a result), and you also get charged for exchanging currency both to and from e-gold...
Are the fees really so small in practice that this doesn't matter?
DNA just wants to be free...
(Remotely associated with net micropayments)
Anyone got any good stories about Internet Banking?
I'm in love with my bank, [Citizen's Bank of Canada]. As long as I keep more than $1K in the account, it's free. *FREE*. No service charges on the account. No transaction fees. *No VISA fees*. *No ATM or DirectPay fees*. And they pay higher interest rates than the big banks.
And every time I use my VISA, ten cents goes to charity. And we bank members get to vote on the charities every year.
Works for me!
My sister-in-law banks with "President's Choice," a big-box grocery/superstore chain in Canada. It pays higher interest, but doesn't do the charity thing. She gets discounts on her groceries... and suffers with a smile the taunts and teases about her grovery bank.
Anyone have experiences to share? Is there anything like this in the USA? Someone from Finland was talking about their country being over 50% e-banking...
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Only one area.
You see, PayPal is not credit card dependent. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from setting up an account without a credit card. If you want to transfer money into an account without a credit card, you can do an electronic funds transfer from a bank account or with a personal check.
Steven E. Ehrbar
The US spends billions every year prosecuting credit card fraud. Are you surprised that other countries are unwilling or unable to dump this kind of money into doing the credit card companies' work? Because the US takes care of fraud for credit card companies, they have no incentive to fix their inherently flawed system.
Credit cards are a bad deal. Period. I won't consider the world to have truly evolved electronic money until the current credit card system isn't involved, or it is massively restructured (and involves cryptographic security). Another requirement isn't that you don't have to "pay" for money. PayPal doesn't qualify because of it's fees (business accounts).
--Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Bear in mind, that at the moment, the uses of Paypal money are somewhat limited. So there is almost nothing to be gained by leaving cash in the account. It's primary use at this time, is a pay on demand system. At least that's how I use it. But going back to the network effects, as more people adopt the system, there will be more advantage to keeping a balance ready there. If you can use it for more than the occasional auction payment you will be more disposed to keeping float handy.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
That's $12 per person, where they are leaving the money there instead of transferring it back to a checking account. I'm suprised that it's that high, based on my experience with it.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
As far as I'm concerned, I don't care if I can get money in or out of the system, I be happy just to have an account to interact with other Pay-Pay users.
David Wagner has done some work on that. Sample code is available in lucre.
It appears to avoid Chaum's patents but I don't know if any patent lawyer has had a good look at it. Your "not certain whether it's possible" comment may stand even after reading this (if you haven't read it already).
Take for example waiters, they're paid much less than minumum wage. I worked as a waiter and made about $2.10/hr in regular wages. Management knows that you'll get tips and that's why they can get away paying so little. Waiters pay income tax on tips even when they don't actually get them, the government assumes you get a certain amount from tips for every hour you work and they tax you on that. This is why tipping is necessary (with an exception for very bad service, in which case I don't tip much either) and why if you don't tip you won't get good service next time.
The problem is that waiters make typically eighty percent or more of their income from tips. If nobody tipped, all the waiters would quit and the price of the meal would have to be raised to pay the waiters properly. With meal prices 20 percent higher, you'd end up "tipping" for good *and* bad service since there'd be no longer be an incentive for good service. Sure, you could just not go out to eat anymore, but you do like to do that right? That's why you do it now?
Yes, we should all remember that the easiest way to spot the pioneers is that they're the ones face down on the ground with arrows in their backs...When was the last time that the creator of a given technology or techniqe was the actual one to dominate because of it? I don't know.
Odds are IE6 and/or MSN will incorporate an online bill paying scheme identical to paypals, and since it will be installed on 60+ million PC's within a year, Microsoft will win out again.
Paypal is not a micropayment system. Micropayments are by definition -very- small (ie: much smaller than a penny)
Look at Mojo Nation for a micropayment system. (and a distributed data haven system based upon it!)
Actually, there's an easy option. Open an X.com bank account (and, at least a short while ago, get $20 free), and give that number to pay-pal. They have an account, albiet one I don't use, and I have no spending limit. Works out well for me.
It's called X.Com, the Internet bank. They offer a high interest checking account, with free debit card, fifty printed checks to start you out, and allow deposits by EFT or good old-fashioned snailmail. They also allow you to email people money, though the people must have or get an X account (or request them to mail a check) to use it.
Getting to it is a bit confusing, though--you have to go to X.Com-PayPal's homepage then click on the little X Finance link below the login box, then click on the "Where's X Finance?" link at the top of the page.
Enjoy!
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
And I forgot to mention, they don't charge you for using ATMs, and refund up to $6/mo of other banks' ATM charges.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
By the way, aside from the charge-backs, PayPal customers now have insurance against unauthorized withdrawals.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Regarding the first point, you don't need to tie your PayPal account to a credit card, you can tie it directly to your bank account.
What you don't seem to understand is that you CAN get it back. See that "Withdraw Funds" button? Click it. You can take any money in your account right out again. Once you've given money from your PayPal account _TO_ someone, that's a different story, but it seems to me you're just trying to stir up confusion and an outroar.
I've been using PayPal for well over 6 months now, and processed a few thousand dollars of incoming cash with them, without the slightest of a problem. They know what they're doing, they've got tons of checks and balances in place, and they don't make a habit of screwing people over.
---
Tim Wilde
Gimme 42 daemons!
where's thanks.php?
:-) but I'll send you a thank-you email!!
In my head right now.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Why would anybody create such a system in the first place? You aren't giving them any way to make a profit, so why go through the effort....
Sure I am. If the system caught on, just think of all the money they could make collecting interest from or re-investing people's still-unspent digital cash. The more money you have access to, the more money you can make with it. Providing a service in exchange for access to people's money is a big part of how most banks, investment companies, etc. stay in business.
They could certainly do this. Imagine a system where you just call up Visa and get a micropayment ID number associated with your card. Then, put a link on your web page to allow users to make a transfer directly from their card to your micropayment ID.
It would be easy for them to implement and, if handled in a non-stupid way, could totally dominate. Or, so I imagine.
Greg
Yeah, but there is a certain network economy to the whole thing. If Visa or Mastercard starts up the same thing now (or Citibank or whoever), who wants to join one of those things in the beginning when they have 100 users and those are the only people you can trade $$$ with?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Why would anybody create such a system in the first place? You aren't giving them any way to make a profit, so why go through the effort....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Exactly, what you are describing is called a bank. There are tons of them. There is no way you could both a) comply with banking law in the US and b) mantain the required anonymity you desire under the system.
Maybe if someone wants to open First National Bank of Sealand or something...
Then again, I hate cash... I hate having to carry it around... you can lose it, its (literally) dirty, and if you give it to someone you have no recourse if they don't perform or your product is defective. Having the same thing in digital form only seems to solve the cleanliness problem as far as I can see. Unless you are some huge privacy freak and that's important to you... but if that's the case, are you really going to trust First National Bank of Sealand or whatever?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
There's another reason why tipping IRL is successful: He's standing right there. You step out of your taxi, and you're looking the guy in the face as he reads off the meter, and you feel obligated to give him a tip, probably mostly because he's looking at you. I mean, since everyone's faceless online, you don't have to look the guy in the eye -- and that's where you may not feel obligated to tip..
The main reason PayPal has become so widespread is eBay. And that is because PayPal has, in eBay sellers, and army of people trying to get other people to use PayPal. After all, if I as a seller have a buyer who uses PayPal, I can get my money instantly, and the buyer gets thier stuff shipped right away. As a seller on eBay I put a note into every end of auction notice I put out that mentions I prefer PayPal and how easy it is to use. Many auctions mention taking PayPal explicitly in the limited auction description space, and generally it's a good idea because people are willing to pay more (sometimes a LOT more) for something they can pay with PayPal (and therefore, I'm assuming, a credit card).
PayPal is also easy to get money out of. After you've collected money for a while, you can have a check cut but you can also have the money directly deposted into a bank account. The speed of doing that will, I'm sure, convince all but the most paranoid of customers to fill out bank account information.
They now have a pretty good setup for letting anyone handle on-line credit card payments. Zounds! They are also poised to take over micro-eCommerce. That system has fees of course, but fairly small ones that seem pretty reasonable.
The way they seem to be going to try and earn a bit more is to have business level accounts that have small percentage fees but more features. The web-payment is but one facet of that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Provide 1600x1200 images.
Ask for $0.50, not $5... A whole used book is much less than $5, a casual reader is pretty unlikley to give you $5 but might just fork over $.50 (or even $.10).
Images on the web are pretty easy to aquire in general, if you provide any extra value like 1600x1200 images (which are harder to find) people are more likley to give you something for that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Good: I used PayPal to pay the good folks at dyndns.org for my hostname.
Bad: cancelling the Palm service (the only other time I used it).
Bad: no international customers. I am owed money by a guy in England. I will let you know when I cave in and have him send me a cheque, because that will be the day before PayPal start their overseas service.
--
--
E_NOSIG
Likewise, if you're wondering why you can't send money to someone in Colombia with PayPal, it's not because X.com is filled with navel-gazing Americans who couldn't give a whoop for the rest of the world, but because there are serious legal restrictions on international cash transfers, and X.com will need to think long and hard about what kinds of services they can offer without running afoul of these restrictions.
(* While I'm sure I will get blasted for saying so, the simple truth is that nothing -- nothing -- roots out organized crime like mandatory reporting of large cash transactions.For those who'd rather deal with organized crime than with the government, there are a number of countries in Africa and Latin America that are currently trying that particular experiment.)
Mass Market Busking: The Inevitable Economics of Software
Basically, if you give money away for anything you like, people will realize this and start trying to make stuff you like. If you don't give out money, nobody will care what you do or don't like. Being generous makes you relevant to the busking industry, much like being gullible makes you relevant to the advertising industry (and think how much better TV would be if it wasn't targeted at people dumb enough to be influenced by advertising, but rather targeted at people bright enough to understand why they should do things that don't have an immediate personal payoff like donating and voting).
It includes a bit on why shareware doesn't work. Basically, shareware screws things up by trying to set a price, and usually way too high (presumably with the thought "I have to set some price, and I know most people won't pay, so I'll have to set it high enough that the few who do pay will make it worth my while."). The fact that making small payments over the internet only recently became possible, and still isn't well-understood by the general public, probably also had something to do with it. I mean, how far are you going to go out of your way to send $20 to some guy who wrote one cheesy utility you use?
--------
Wouldn't it be great if you could have one distributed system for transferring any fungible commodity?
Think of buying stuff with gallons of gasoline, standard bricks, or milligrams of antimatter (eventually).
I don't think we can hang on to any one commodity as money forever. Eventually we'll mine gold out of asteroids and make children's toys, statues, and novelty houses out it. We'll have to keep switching to whatever is valuable. (and, no, levitating legal tender bank notes aren't good long-term money by themselves; they're only as good as their government's economic health)
--------
I agree with your general assessment, except that you have overlooked two crucial details: the ability to make micropayments instantly (I only support e-gold because it the only working international micropayment system), and the advantages for taking payment.
You can't send small amounts (pennies, nickels, dimes) by credit card. There are minimum credit card charges, somewhere around $0.50, so small payments are mostly transfer fee, and just aren't worth doing. A realistic minimum for cc payment is about $3, and that's really pushing it.
As for the other half, anyone can be taking e-gold payment as soon as they get an account, which only takes a few minutes. Perhaps most importantly, there are no chargebacks, and no possibility of a payment dispute. For good or for ill, once a payment is made, it is done.
I'd hate to take credit cards for payment over the internet. As the merchant, you are basically the one taking all the risk. If something goes wrong, it comes out of your pocket. Also, there are a lot of rules in the merchant account agreement that aren't directly related to taking cc payment. For example, you can't charge extra for a cc purchase than a cash purchase: you have to hide that $0.50 or whatever it costs per transaction in your price, so your prices have to go up across the board.
--------
It's worse than that. It used to be that you tipped for excellent service, and a decent tip was around 10%. Now crummy waiters act as if they're entitled to 15% gratuity. You dropped a $30 meal on my table, disappeared for 30 minutes as I choked on a dry steak without access to water, and now you come to me wanting me to pay you $5 for the pleasure of your non-service?
If your employer isn't paying you enough, quit. I didn't hire you and I'm not going to pay your salary. If a 15% tip is required, it should be printed on the damn menu.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
One better than that.
I was just in my local supermarket, getting the usual qunatity of caffenated drinks. The person in front of me was purchasing a pair of onions.
That's a total cost of 15 pence (About 25 cents).
He paid by Switch. Switch is a form of electronic fund transfer (A debit card).
No cash. No cheque. No delay. Who needs PayPal?
I haven't written a cheque. Actually, I take that back, I wrote one, once. 5 years ago. Switch rocks. Largely.
No, it's not a smart card. It's a conventional magnetic card.
It contains your bank details, and when it's used, the computer in the supermarket contacts the computer in the bank, and the money is transferred from one account to the other.
No 'cash' is stored on the card.
My point was that the overhead in direct electronic funds transfer is now so low, you can use it for any amount.
I know I do.
3. International Use. You must be a resident of the United States to use the Service. International accounts will be available soon.
How Soon?
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
I heard a few years ago the Microsoft was scheming on a way to get a few millicents on each transaction on the Internet. (There was a joke going around at the time that dollar bills would be replaced by Bill Dollars.)
I predict that either M$FT will buy PayPal, or they will announce a competing system within a few weeks, introduce Version 1.0 in about 9 months, and actually get something that sort of works within 5 years.
P.S. You can use PayPal at BadKittyCam.
From Subject
... ad nauseam ...
joe@abc.comPaypal only in US
qwerty@asdf.netPayPal not in Canada
null@example.comPayPal - What about ROTW?
---
You can transfer money to and from your online account using your credit card or bank account. Your credit card must have a U.S. billing address, and you must be over 18 years of age. Transaction limits may apply. Useless for us NON americans.
---
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
BTW, AOLiza is great!
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This means that international users would have to constantly be converting based on floating exchange rates.
Yep. There is no way I could possibly handle a micropayment account in the uk - as I found out recently having played with one of those online question/answer sites. I got an accumulated quarter's payment (all 30ukp of it) then found english banks charge a *flat fee* of 8ukp (say 12usd at the time) for handling a US-banked cheque, and *then* give a worse conversion rate than the ones available on the web (they are converted at the holiday-currency exchange rate, which obviously has a built-in profit). of the 30ukp, I saw just over 20ukp - meaning the bank had taken a bigger chunk of the payment than the website had for hosting it (and I didn't *mind* that, given they had to support their own investment of software, net connection and server space).
I don't know about other countries, but in the uk they seem to believe every other currency should be preconverted and drawn on an english bank before they can accept it, which I suppose is another nail in the coffin of this government's much-advertised "make Britain a home for e-commerce" policy they have already shattered with the RIP bill.
<sigh>
--
-=DaveHowe=-
It also isn't done much, so there is no economy of scale.
I would dispute that - given the amount of trade between the US and europe, there must be a fair amount of inter-bank communication (I imagine mostly legal documents much more valuable than my pocket-change cheque). If that wasn't enough, my bank freely admitted that, if the cheque had been written out in UK pounds rather than US dollars, they would have just pushed it into the clearing system as with any other cheque, and it probably would have taken a bit longer to clear, but would not have attracted any special charges (in theory, uk banks charge each other and foreign banks for the service, and are charged in turn by those banks for outbound transactions; in practice, the clearing system assumes that each bank will absorb any fees knowing that, if in the long term things didn't balance out, the bank has bigger problems than a few clearing charges)
I believe the US does not have such a central system, so presumably any deals would have to be made between the english Central Cheque Clearing System and the US bank concerned.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
FWIW I have transfered much larger sums between banks in the UK and other european countries, and payed payed about 1gbp for it. It was an *electronic transfer*
Yep, that would do - or a reverse-transaction onto my credit card. the problem was mostly the site's doing - they hadn't considered having to deal with non-us users, so obviously for them posting out cheques is easier or cheaper, or both.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
Have you thought about getting a US dollar account? I think it's possible here in the UK might be worth talking to your bank?
Yep, it's possible - but unfortunately they would then be *business* accounts, with a minimum balance, monthly and per-transaction charges and all the overheads that go with that (it also couldn't be in my name, unless I claimed to be a sole trader using my own name as a business name)
From one point of view I can see their point - in this case, it was very much a business transaction (I sold knowledge on the net and got back money) but the monthly charges alone would come to more than the 30ukp/quarter I had been paid. They are more geared to international-sales companies than private individuals.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
<tone=mildly sarcastic>This would be the one where they had to recently change the entry requirements because so many of the member states hadn't met them?
As far as I know, the long term plan is to join the Ecu system, once it is stable and our exchange rate is good. At the time the decision had to be made however, it appeared that
- The UK would struggle to meet the entry requirements (the idea of just having them changed must not have occurred to our politicians)
- The UK would enter the fixed relative value with the pound badly positioned against other european currencies; this isn't a terrible thing in the short term, but not something you want to set in stone
- The "common man" as guided and instructed by such educational media as "The Sun" were against it to the extent it would cause political trouble - and it was timed to come up close enough to an election that following the view of the hurd may well get the current set of lizards elected for another term)
In any case, it wouldn't help the situation much - the uk banks would merely increase the list of currencies to two - and US banks and firms would still expect the rest of the world to accept their currency.--
-=DaveHowe=-
Ah, but if you have an account with a US bank you can. I've done business with canadians via PayPal.
The setup screen expects you/requires you to enter an address in the united states - I don't know how entering a false address would effect the legality of an account with them, however.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
Sounds cool - do they have any branches outside of london? I could do with someplace within travel of Manchester.
--
-=DaveHowe=-
ah, found their website here. I will ask them directly - but thanks for the tip, the US dollar account looks to be spot on...
--
-=DaveHowe=-
I'm not really shure, but I think that they would just fuck themselves over by recharging you when you reversed the charges. Specifically, the credit card company will just keep charging _them_ $20 per charge back which will fuck them over really quickly if they keep recharging you and you keep getting charge backs. Plus, they may loose their merchant account.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Hello? That's the whole point. Sure, American citizens have credit cards that can be used in stores and for purchasing stuff online -- but they have no easy, consistent way of sending money to each other.
That's why a company like PayPal can exist in the US. In many European countries, PayPal is mostly obsolete.
I've maintained a PayPal link associated with my science fiction short stories and (small collection of) photos, with an explanation that somebody can show appreciation if they like my works just by establishing a PayPal account. With $5 for me and $5 for them (and no out-of-pocket expense for them), it's an easy (and profitable) way to show appreciation, right? It's optional, of course -- the content can be seen/read for free.
Have I received even one tip? Nope. Maybe my writing and photography sucks. Maybe not enough people are even seeing my work. Or maybe tipping via PayPal doesn't work, at least not the way I'm trying. Oh well, it's a good thing I'm not publishing that way to make a living! I do it mostly in the hopes that others will enjoy my stuff... If I end up with a few bucks, I won't complain, but that's not the driving motivation.
No Laughing Allowed!
After reading the article, I thought that it (PayPal) would be a fantastic way to accept donations for my work on various websites, technical support assistance, and things of the like. Unfortunately, their service is available only to Americans; as a Canadian, I am completely out of luck. Does anybody know of any similar services that they would recommend?
--
CitizenC
Unless you are Finish, or have travelled extensively (and know that this gentleman is in error), I don't understand the incredulity behind your response. Are you sure that the contention of this polite Fin (i.e., no checks in Finland) is innacurate? Maybe he was using hyperbole, which isn't unknown on Slashdot. At any rate, your hostility was unearned.
Does it make you feel powerful to be rude to strangers?
As someone who has lived quite extensively abroad, I know that US banking is many years behind what is offered in much of Europe, so our Finnish friend may indeed be telling the truth, even if he has stretched the point.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
That doesn't mean they are less of a person.
And where was it implied that they were? You were reading what you wanted to into his words.
In short, the only person who should follow the advise to "get over yourself" appears to be you. At the very least, you should take a course in critical reading.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Ditto -- I usually don't have the cash on me to pick up a burger at McD's. I live in Canada where we allow direct payment at almost all stores via a bank card (the same card you use to get cash out of the cash machines). The industry is open, compatible and fast -- I can spend money at any store with a 'debit' machine that I want, as long as I have the cash in my account.
... I promote privacy and security ... there are good middle-points.
That said, I don't care about the privacy of what I buy. The worst that can happen in 99% of cases is being targetted for advertising which I actually like. I do. I don't want to watch barbie commercials or courses for upgrading my skills. I want to see lots and lots of high-speed car commercials, ads for which stores offer me fastest and cheapest home delivery, etc. Targetted advertising is 'a good thing', as long as its anonymous.
With canadian banking cards, your name isn't on the card at all (except if you sign the back) and you don't have to hand it to anyone, you just swipe it through the machine yourself and punch in your code. No signing, no name, no nothing. Sure, they can break the law and store your card ID# to track your spending, but it won't get them anywhere in identifying me.
I like convenience
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
PayPLA?
Why, that's great, because those PLA people deserve every cent. It takes a special kind of person to describe how to really hack WWIV BBSes.
--
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
(I'm the original poster in this thread.)
Now, this is interesting. I will have to reread the current ToS.
To those who say that PayPal is a "micro-payments" service, I say that in the cases where I've been interested in using it, the payments were far above the "micro" level.
Yes, this is a big change from what it was when I contemplated joining.
Good for them. Looks like a reasonable service now.
It's not really an issue at the moment, is it? From the Terms of Use:
That "available soon" has been there since they started...
Hi!
You have to consider that you had a *cheque*. That peice of paper had to be *securely* shipped to the US bank, presumably at the expense of the UK bank.
It also isn't done much, so there is no economy of scale.
FWIW I have transfered much larger sums between banks in the UK and other european countries, and payed payed about 1gbp for it. It was an *electronic transfer*
best wishes,
Mike.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
The article talks about how the "micropayment wars are over" and that PayPal is oh so great and all-knowing. How come people outside the US can't sign up then? Please, if you write an article that only concerns US citizens, state that fact, too. Slashdot is international enough for that.
Now I dont know which "other countries" you are talking about, but I think it is a matter of different strategies to counter CC fraud. It seems that the US are concentrating on prosecuting those who commit fraud, but have a rather lax security, which makes fraud easy.
Here (sweden) we focus more on avoiding CC fraud by demanding ID+signature or a PIN-code with almost every transaction.(certainly every transaction large enough to be worth the effort) Therefore there is much less fraud to prosecute, which might lead to a less efficient judicial process.
Neither method is inherantly better. You gain the ease-of-use that comes with less security (like being able to use your card for mail or phone order) but pay a higher price in law enforcement. We lose some functionality, while being able to feel more secure with our cards.
Trouble starts when we try to interact. We get robbed, since we are not used to that an imposter can use our cards. You have a hard time, since the our police is not set up to handle a less secure CC policy.
Instead of blaming everyone for being anti-{your country here} instead ask yourself what your country could do to make their economy more accessable so the paypals of the world CAN set up shop in your country.
Oh our economy is accessable enough thank you. So accessible, in fact, that there is not much need for paypal. I can pay for things online directly from my bank account. I do need a little box that generates one time passwords, but I wouldn't trust a system with less security to access my money.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Don't think WAP banking will catch on, though, until the phone companies catch up. I only think there is one bank here (ruotsi) who offers WAP banking. Unfortunately the bank must set up their own wap-gateway, since no operator supports secure transmissions. Good business for Nokia, who sells the gateways, but not good for wap tecnology...
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I'm sure they had huge problems with people "sending" money and then forgetting to hotsync. I beam you $5, you think you've collected...I go home, don't hotsynch, or lose my pilot, or (maliciously) reset all the pilot info (or delete the conduit...) Not to mention that I could "beam" you $5 that my Palm thinks I have that I don't, actually. For financial systems, you need more reliability than that. By forcing the transaction to occur online, it is possible to verify account balance, etc., realtime.
Of course, I'm one of those luddite throwbacks who thinks my Palm should be one device and my mobile phone should be another. And who thinks that trying to browse the web on my teeny-tiny Nokia 8890 screen wouldn't be any fun even if Nokia were stupid enough to put in web-access. As for putting my phone in my Palm, what happens when I want to write down a phone number while I'm talking on the phone? "Ok, Six..hang on...Ok...Five...Hang on...OK, Zero...hang on..." Until I can get a bluetooth wireless earpiece to hook into my Palm, I want two devices, thank you very much.
Which is not to say I don't miss the Palm beaming, too. I'll just have to wait until the Palm VII gets as small as the Palm V (the VII is big enough I'd just leave it on my desk all the time) so I can have portable net access.
I think Paypal is going to hit critical mass pretty soon; even if it cost them $16 million ($5 referral * 3.3 million) for their current user base that's peanuts for a startup these days. I wonder what their revenue model is? Hmmm...
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Ooops bad link, sorry. AlphaPython is here instead.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
This is basically paranoia. Last time I checked, anyone to whom you give a personal check has your bank account number.
PayPal is backed by more than one major international financial institution. It appears to be pretty safe -- I've used them for awhile now on ebay, with no problems.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
From: http://www.paypal.x.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/ema/
Common Uses for Send Money
Buy an auction item
Settle restaurant checks with friends
Pay a portion of rent to roommates
Send money to your children at college
;)
Well, at least he didn't say "and I use it to send money to my children at college!"
and full-service fueling
Really? I never realized one was supposed to, I had the impression the more expensive cost of the gas was supposed to cover their wages. How much do you tip?
Does everyone else but me tip gas jockeys too?
Now crummy waiters act as if they're entitled to 15% gratuity.
... if you wish them to refrain from spitting in your food next time you're there.
Well they are
Subject: Notice regarding PayPal's Palm software We wish to inform you that X.com will be discontinuing support of the PayPal software for Palm (TM) and Handspring (TM) organizers approximately three weeks from now. With the growth of wireless Internet applications and the rapid spread of web-enabled PDAs, we feel that we can best serve our customers by focusing on the creation of new features for our wireless payments platform. Your online account will not be affected when we discontinue the Palm support. However, you will no longer be able to synchronize your Palm software with your online account. X.com strongly recommends that you first synchronize your organizer and then immediately uninstall the PayPal software. (To remove the PayPal software from your Palm organizer, please consult the "Removing applications" section of your Palm manual.) Also, we request that you no longer "beam" the PayPal software on to other Palm users from this time forward. If you would like to learn more about using X.com on your web-enabled mobile phone, please visit our website at https://secure.paypal.x.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/g en/mobile_phone-outside.
We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause you, and we wish to thank you for using X.com to send and receive money.
Sincerely,
The X.com Wireless Team
Sadly, I don't believe tipping will ever work. People would get used to getting stuff for free and not very many people would do it. There is no such thing as a viable non-enforceable payment plan. Just ask makers of shareware.
If you're Canadian we can arrange to send you a Canadian check since we're also Canadian.
Matt.
Fairtunes co-founder.
How many of those 3.3 million users are using their PayPal accounts for auction payments? What happens to PayPal if ebay should ban the use of PayPal, or ebay's competing product (Billpoint?) takes off? I recognize that this may be unlikely, but I think it does throw a shadow of doubt on the "certainty" of PayPal's success.
Hmm.. I dont see this as a big risk. Sure there are folks out there that will get some bucks through a system like this, and perhaps it will alter their 'creation' (whatever it may be), but if that alteration is for the worse (predictable) they will most likely fade away, if that change is pleasing to their audience (whoever that may be) more power to them..
I think most 'creative' people do some work for ca$h, and usually have something going on the side just for fun.. I don't see how this would change that. I know that part of the charm of something you create without any monetary pay-back, is that you dont have to answer to anyone.
--OK.. Did I get enough 'quotes' and (parentheses) in there?
air and light and time and space
PayPal does allow this. From their FAQ:
Do I have to register a credit card or verify a bank account in order to send money?
No. However, since your account will start with a $0 balance, before you send money to anyone, you need to fund your account by sending a personal check to PayPal or by adding funds through electronic funds transfers from your bank account.
So, you can send a personal check in, and fund your account that way. It's just that Credit Cards are more convenient for most people.
--
$tar -xvf
Your comment reminds me of what's happened to tipping in meatspace. You know, in restaurants. Originally, tipping was meant to be a bonus given for very good or exceptional service. It was literally a gratuity -- you gave the tip because you wanted to, because you though the waiter/waitress deserved it.
But look at tipping now. You're looked down upon if you don't tip at least 15%, no matter how the service was. Tipping changed from being something done out of gratitude to something done out of obligation. You look like a cheap bum if you don't tip, period. Which really defeats the purpose of tipping in the first place. (Heck, a lot of restaurants automatically add a 15% obligatory "gratuity" to your bill for parties of 6 or more!)
Anyway, that's what your post reminded me of. Ten years down the line, maybe microtipping every site will be something you almost have to do. Or maybe not. OK, I'm done.
--
--
The real Captain Derivative has a Slashdot ID.
I wonder if US anti-money laundering regulations have to do with this?
-
-
Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
Umm... no offense to anyone who lives out of the states, but the US has enough potential customers to make PayPals very wealthy. Sure, they'd have more potential customers if they went global, but they are relatively small now (400 employees) and the complexeties of international trade coupled with the ever-changing mess of currency conversions. Again, the US has enough money changing hands to make PayPals very successful.
"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
IANAB (I am not a broker), and I don't know anything about e-gold. But, I do know that gold has not been a good investment over the past 20 years.
:(
http://www.kitco.com/charts/histori calgold.html Go here, and do some historical graphs.
Historical average 1833-1999: $25/oz to 1968. Then it lept to $600 in 1980, dropped to $400 in '82, and bounced between $300 - $400 until now.
Remember: you want investments to increase in value, and debts to decrease. Investing in gold & storage seems to reverse that.
But I'm just an optics geek, and not a gold guru.
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to troll, and I am not a qualified financial advisor.
Reading the basic "what is egold" blurb at their site, I must say that this looks like a terrible idea. If I understood correctly, they are marketing the idea of making purchases via gold redemption, and accepting payments in terms of gold purchases.
That's crazy!
- It's akin to paying/being-paid in stocks, and volatile ones at that. The most common advice given by financial advisors regarding investment vehicles is to buy-and-hold. Buying & selling stocks in the short-term for daily/monthly expenses would be considered foolhardy by most. But that seems to be the concept at e-gold.
- If you ever want to convert gold to curreccy, you'll take a hit from brokerage-type fees.
- You pay them for storage, unlike a bank which pays you to "store" your money.
I honestly can't think of a good reason someone would use e-gold. Even for international transactions, it seems using a credit card would be easier, simpler, and safer.
I welcome some comments from the pro-egold folks to explain why they use this service.
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
Ah, but if you have an account with a US bank you can. I've done business with canadians via PayPal.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does anybody else hate it how posting at some point in a discussion is futile, even if you have something important to say?
Anyway, there's another service called ProPay.com.
I interviewed with them a few weeks ago. Their head developer seemed quite clever, but I asked him a few times if they were worried about PayPal, and what he thought their strengths were. I'm not sure why, but he said "it's the other way around. They're afraid of us." He admitted their market lead, but said they didn't have the technical and marketing edge they did. Hmmmmm.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
PayPal has essentially none of the cool features considered desirable for a cryptographic cash protocol, so there's still plenty of room for competition based on better technology. Check out the Lucre home page for details of a (seemingly) patent-free system for providing untraceable electronic cash.
--
Xenu loves you!
http://www.privatebuy.com/ from ecount.
This looked great right up until I got to the part where you can only load your account using an existing credit card.
Somebody else in this thread mentioned that one thing that holds back anonymous payment methods is that they could be used for money laundering, and I have to begrudgingly admit that that's a valid point. Even with limits such as those established by privatebuy ($500 worth of transactions per day, no more than $1000 in your account at one time), somebody could still hack a system where money was chanelled through a large number of accounts under different names. After all, the crime syndicates of the U.S. Government and credit card companies do need to protect their interests against the machinations of lesser crime syndicates.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, Neal Stephenson's short story The Great Simoleon Caper is an entertaining, thought-provoking look at the topic of anonymous e-cash.
So far, all of the online payment systems I've seen, including Paypal and Yahoo's payment service, are lacking in at least two areas:
What I would really like to see is a payment system where, as a user, I could set up an anonymous account and send the company a money order along with a note to "please deposit in account XYZ123". I would then have that much money to spend online. The payment company would collect a 1% service charge on everything I purchased, and all transactions are guaranteed to be as anonymous as practically possible (i.e. they would only collect enough data to prevent fraud and abuses, and never to share the data or use it commercially). People who wanted to receive payments through the service would have to identify themselves, of course.
Does anyone know if there is anything like this already in existance? Would you use it if it were available?
"Soon" has been quite a few months now..
Adam
Inexchange costs: somewhat painful. As for outexchange, the SOP is to calculate payments as the amount that could be outexchanged, so it makes more sense to look at all the exchange costs as inexchange costs. But re. storage: 1% per year? That's nothing. Your money shouldn't be sitting there that long anyway.
:) ).
All in all, if you're careful and willing to wait a while for your deposit to get in, you'll lose maybe 5-7% between putting money in and getting money out. The nice thing is that 5-7% holds no matter whether you're transferring pennies or thousands. Of course, that's assuming the precious metal market doesn't go nuts (of course it could go either way, but in the long term... well, asteroid mining can't help the price of gold much). Also, if you're in a rush, or you're lazy about shopping around, you can expect to lose closer to 15% through the transfer. Ironically, the best combination of price and convenience comes from funding your e-gold account with PayPal!
I think it's a pretty good deal if you want to send nickels and dimes all over the place, and you never keep more money in it than you are willing to lose. I think a fair assumption of risk is that your account will zero once every 2 years (yes, I pulled that number out of my hat; more below), at least unless they make some major changes to their security model. No big deal for a micropayment account, as long as you keep it in mind.
Obviously, I don't think much of the security. You have to remember that these people don't know you. With a bank, you go and create an account face-to-face, they have all sorts of nice meatspace backups and redundancies to make sure you are you when you go in to do something with your money. With something like e-gold, if you have the password, you must be the right person, and your account can be emptied, laundered through an anonymous e-cash system like digigold, and safely in the account of the thief in an eyeblink. You might be able to get your money back, but only if you could prove you didn't transfer it.
I also don't like the way they've eroded the legal foundation of e-gold. They keep talking about replacing the user contract, and they've got a clause which allows them to make any changes if you don't object within a week of them posting it on their website... whether you read it or not within that time. They made a big deal about the "unconditional right of redemption", which was your only last-ditch guarantee: if everything goes wrong, you can always have the metal in your account (having the cash value sent to you is not a guaranteed service; they have no contractual obligation to provide any service but that of returning your gold). In the proposed changes to the contract, they changed it to "conditional right of redemption", and they only have to give you your gold in neat bar-sized increments. Since a gold bar is worth something in the region of a year's pay, obviously this isn't a lot of help to the typical user. In the past, they dealt in coins, right down to silver coins worth under $20, so you could redeem practically any account. If the system ever becomes so insecure that everyone wants out, and nobody wants any e-gold, there's no guarantee that you'll get your money out. Basically, under the new plan, the emergency escape clause only works as long as there isn't any emergency.
It isn't secure, it isn't terribly convenient, and it isn't really cheap, but it works, it works all over the world, and it works now (that is, at least when the servers are up
Here's an e-gold discussion forum that goes way back. It covers the good, the bad, and the ugly of e-gold, with tasty sprinklings of marketroidese and paranoid ranting.
--------
Comment removed based on user account deletion
~d
Micropayments involve incredibly small amounts of value. How much does a single HTTP request for 20K of data cost? We're talking about thousandths to millionths of a cent here. The smallest transaction you can make with PayPal is one cent.
As others have mentioned, you can't use PayPal outside of the US...
Mojo Nation is trying to create a mircopayment "barter system" backed in disk space, CPU, and bandwidth. It's bootstrapping the process with a distributed filesystem. You exchange your system resources for "Mojo" which you can exchange with other people consuming their resources (i.e. for downloading data from them). A single Mojo represents an incredibly small amount of value. In the long term we hope that Mojo will float on it's own and people will buy and sell it (possibly by using PayPal for settlement). We also hope people will build other services and charge Mojo.
Check it out, it's really cool, Mojo Nation.
Burris
(from PayPal's website):
/dev/null ?
The recipient gets an email that says "You've Got Cash!"
Do they really expect people not to dump such an Email directly to
The net has over 100 million users, the big three credit card companies have nearly a combined billion cardholders, yet according to Cringely the 3.3 million customers of PayPal makes them "unassailable".
In fact, I'd say that 3.3 million users is a very small set of net users, and that the real challenge is to reach those who are not geeks nor addicted to online auctions.
It sounds like a great service -- except where do I use it? I don't give money to friends that often.
I mean, I want micropayments for online web sites. It doesn't look like this has made any penetration into that market. According to the PayPal web site, eBay is accepting PayPal, but I haven't seen it anywhere else.
Apparently there are 3.3 million customers -- that have signed up to get a free $5. The float is $40M. That's only $12/person. That doesn't sound like it's getting a lot of "real" use to me.
On another subject, I remember that there was a guy in the early digital cash space that was trying to create anonymous digital cash. He considered it important from a privacy standpoint that digital cash should be untraceable, just like regular cash. I would imagine PayPal is not that, but does anyone know what happened to that guy or what happened with his technology?
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Before PayPal goes global, it has to figure out a good way of transferring funds to and from the users. This is a key problem that needs to be solved. Checks are totally out of the question globally, as well as credit cards to some extent. Virtually everyone in the States has a credit card, and they are easy to get. However, this is not the case worldwide, especially among teenagers and young adults, which I suppose are a key group for PayPal.
Online banking and money transferring in general varies a lot between different countries. Being a Finn, the primitive system of the States sometimes amuses me.
Here in Finland online banking has been available for over 15 years. Today, over 50 percent of the country's internet users use online banking. Nobody uses checks. I doubt they even exist in this country.
As far as domestic e-commerce is concerned, nobody uses credit cards. We have several payment options, one of which is an advanced money-transfer system. It basically is a normal online money transfer from one account to another, but allows the retailer to verify the transfer automatically, instantly.
What I'm trying to say is that PayPal has a long way to go to make it globally.
Give me a payment system, preferably anonymous, which doesn't claim the right to change the terms I've "agreed" to (using that term loosely) whenever they wish to, and I'm interested. Alternatively, how about I make the agreement subject to modifications documented on my web site and e-gold gets 10 days to dispute them.
My intent isn't to pick on e-gold, but on this practice in general. "I agree to $foo, $bar, and $baz, but you can change them any time you want." Why do you accept this?
Just to let everyone know. The reason PayPal is giving away $5 to each new user is because they make more than $5 on the balance left in your PayPal account.
It very similar to the way American Express makes a fortune on their travelers checks. All those unused travlers checks out there = $$$ in AMEX's pocket which it can invest to make more $$$.
Not that travelers checks/paypal are bad. They both make it more secure to make transactions in unfamilar environments.
My advice is to transfer your $$$ out of your account ASAP and for you to make the $$$ not them.
Cash in those unused travlers checks also!
That is all -click!-
-"The early bird catches the worm, but the late bird sleeps the most"
e-gold is still alive and kicking. (There's a refer(r)er-id in that link, if you don't want it chop it off. You have been warned.
But on the subject: e-gold is managing fine, and at least they don't have problems with people not from the US.
Within Norway, you can wire money to anybody with a bank account, regardless of which bank I, or they, use. To pay bills, I go online to my bank's Internet service, enter the account number of the person to transfer to, the amount, and the date at which the transaction should execute. Setting up recurring payments is also possible. Transferring between countries is also quite simple using the SWIFT system.
Now, I can appreciate why PayPal appeals to Americans, if only as a temporary stopgap until all your banks allow sending money to each other. In the meantime, my American friends keep "writing checks". Sheesh. Welcome to the future, guys :)
(I once cashed an American check in my home country. It took one month to clear, and the intermediates took a huge bite out of the total amount. Next time I used SWIFT and it took three days and the money were more or less intact.)
As an aside, PayPal only works with American credit cards. I am currently in the US, and in a recent eBay payment my Norwegian credit card was rejected because they could not verify the billing address (and there was no country field available for the billing address). I have also totally failed to buy stuff from MassMerchandise, where they consider my Norwegian email address to be "high risk" (duh!) and their billing-address verification system has problems even verifying American cards.
That's what paypal's for. Not the huge stuff where you NEED a non-performance garauntee. There are other safeguards in place to make sure your eBay product works (eg, the eBay feedback system). For the big stuff, I'll still use plastic, ThankYouVeryMuch.
And about paypal stealing your money once you give it to them: if too many people complained about this (in other words, if they did it often enough to make it worth their while), there would be an uproar and they wouldn't stay the "de facto standard" for very long. There are still alternatives...
The interesting thing about PayPal is that it allows you to get cash from a credit card, but the transaction isn't treated as a cash advance. Generally, credit card merchant agreements don't allow the merchant to sell cash charged to a credit card; the potential for fraud is too great. I'm not sure how PayPal got around this.
Micropayments are a non-starter. All the enthusiasm for micropayments comes from people who want to collect them, not from people who want to pay them. Micropayments are the past; flat-rate is the present. Remember when AOL and Prodigy charged by the hour?
Palmpal was very good. They even used to offer a means of paying other people or transferrinf money to others right through your PalmOS PDA. That was excellent until they cancelled it. This was an excellent system. I'm not saying it's not great right now, but the ability to use a PDA for paying was amazing. Can you imagine being at the store, taking out your PDA, aiming at an IR port, and then paying? I for one, would love that.
It's too bad PayPal got rid of this, because with this they could have continued being at the front of innovative payment technology.
At least, that's where I was putting my money.
Paypal is a great system, of course, this is in theory, since it is currently not possible to use it in Canada. So, basically, I can't use it. For that matter neither can a European, Asian, or anyone else. I think it's a little presumptuous to assume that the success of Paypal in the US is any indicator of whether this is actually useful in the real world. By that, I mean, the entire world.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
I threw up a 50 cent donation link on the AOLiza site a few days ago and I've already gotten a good response. A few people decided to 'buy' multiple donations, upping the donation.
It makes me feel a lot better than throwing up a stupid banner on every page just to get some money. Apparently it makes my visitors feel better too.
Paypal rocks, though I'm really disappointed that they dropped support for the Palm...
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
It seems to me that the problem with previous micropayment schemes was not the scheme itself, but that there was never a situation in which the convenience of using the system outweighed the risks associated with trusting an outside party with your money and transactions.
eBay provided the fluid marketplace that created the situation where that convenience overrode the inherent mistrust of a newcomer like PayPal.
eBay brought the idea of the auction as a sales model to the forefront of the net, they also pioneered community based trust mechanisms that let their model survive even though they don't back transactions directly (something that would have quickly invalidated their business model).
What was supposed to be a concept that allowed high-brow concepts like online media micropayments seems to have come about largely because of the requirements of some people to sell $5 pens and beany babies.
Probably important not to forget that no matter how large the venture capital some firm gets to change the internet, most likely it won't succeed unless we decide it will.
I started out to register at PayPal, but because this was actual money we're talking about here, I took the time to read the agreement.
Bah! Feh!
If you use a credit card to pay for goods and services, you have the right to withhold payment for non-performance. The issuing bank charges back to the vendor in such cases.
You give that up with PayPal.
There's this long paragraph about reversing charges. In the event that you reverse a charge, you authorize them to turn around and re-charge your card. As many times as you reverse the charge, they'll put it back on.
Once you give money to PayPal you'll never see it again unless and until you sue them.
Sure, I own some CD's that I love so much I would have paid $50 for them. A tip system would be great to show my gratitude to the artist. And as the poster wrote, there are some personal websites that had me ROTFLMAO or greatly influenced me as a web developer and designer. I would love to send them $5 and say "Thanks! Have a beer on me."
That said, I wonder how long it will go on before things we used to do for pleasure and personal edification are motivated by the prospect of being micropaid for it. Art by the amateur has always been done for the love of producing art - it freaks me out a bit to think that amateur art may now be done for micropayments. Obviously, that's not the sole reason it's done but it could certainly be a motivator now. As an example, most /.ers participate because they enjoy participating but, be honest now, karma is definately a motivator, right? And what is karma? An abstract point system for quality posts - it doesn't really do anything but make you feel good. Now imagine if karma were micropayments - even more incentive right?
I guess I'm just wondering if micropayments will devalue the intrinsic good of things like art. I pull off and help someone change their flat tire or return a lost wallet to contribute good to the world, not b/c I'm hoping for compensation. A "Thanks a lot" is the only compensation I want. And while this may be extreme, it's possible these things could be motivated by the micropayment.
"Hey, nice shoes!"
"Thanks, here's a $1 micropayment!"
I realize that is a silly example but it helps to illustrate the possible trend towards money being the sole motivator and compensator for everything. I remember reading an article a while back about sites like Epinions and "expert" sites. They explored why people would devote large amounts of time to writing reviews and answering questions for complete strangers. The short answer was "egoboo" or ego boosts that came from being positively rated as a reviewer. But it made me proud that these sites went counter to the idea of the net being a commercial medium, like the corps view it. I was proud to be involved with a medium that is about free exchange of information and assistance with the motivation being the virtue of helping someone else out without compensation. I just wonder if micropayments for everything will threaten that notion.
Sorry to play devil's advocate but I have only read about how wonderful a micropayment system will be in light of the whole Napster fiasco. I've just been waiting for the other shoe to drop...
-------
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry