The PayPal Phenomenon

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Pretty interesting and thorough history of PayPal." Not really the usual fare on Slashdot, but this is a very readable account of one of the few dot-com successes. I find PayPal pretty annoying today - a lot of the anti-fraud, privacy-invasive measures which this article applauds make Paypal much less enticing to me than it used to be. And they've been accused of squatting on people's funds at the slightest excuse. But maybe that's the way to success: start off with a very appealing product, then slowly tighten the screws.

Comments

God in Heaven...

[Accipiter]

I find PayPal pretty annoying today - a lot of the anti-fraud, privacy-invasive measures which this article applauds make Paypal much less enticing to me than it used to be.

Michael. Do you look for reasons to bitch? I swear to God, wannabe privacy advocates piss me off. How do you expect PayPal to do business such as it does (WITH ACCESS TO YOUR CREDIT CARD) without a modicum of personal information, hm? Do you think it would make good business sense for PayPal to say "You know, we don't need any of your personal information. Just give us your credit card number, and we'll base our business on the honor system."

Yeah. Right.

I strongly recommend you have a look at Paypal's Privacy Policy. Since you're obviously doing some blind, ignorant whining about subject matter with which you have absolutely no clue, I guarantee you've never even clicked on the privacy policy. PayPal does their best to explain what information is gathered, why it's gathered, and how it's used. If you don't like it, don't use the service. But don't complain.

Michael's comment absolutely reeks of "I'm with Stupid", "follow everyone else's opinion" mentality. "Wow. The community is really for individual privacy! It's time for me to attempt to gain acceptance with my (cough) peers by complaining about privacy-invading goons!"

Yes. Privacy is important. However, when you choose to conduct business over the internet with a credit card, bitching about a company doing its best to protect yours and their asses only serves to make you look like (more of) an idiot.

Personally, I've had nothing but excellent service with PayPal. It's nice to be able to accept credit cards, or use credit cards to pay for something without a whole shitload of messy paperwork. I've got to give PayPal a lot of credit. They've become a very successful online transaction service, and pretty much the standard auction payment system on eBay. (Ah, no need to worry about sending checks or money orders through the mail. Instant payment rocks.)