eBay finishes PayPal Acquisition 66
Aidenn writes "As some may remember,
eBay was in the process of merging with PayPal. It is finally finished. eBay has information here. news.com has a more complete story."
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eBay finishes PayPal Acquisition
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Ya'll hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some rays and became a tangent ?
Will they revamp paypal? (Score:4, Insightful)
One would hope that they'd completey revamp PayPal's customer service. EBay is a highly visible company. Hopefully this will encourage them to start treating PayPal customers better.
Re:Will they revamp paypal? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Will they revamp paypal? (Score:1)
I've never had any problems with PayPal whatsoever, nor has anybody ever complained to me.
Frankly, I find PayPal quite handy. Not only can I charge a fixed amount for my software, I can also easly send customized amounts for special situations.
And compared to every other service I've looked at, the rates they charge are next to nothing(their 3% vs. as much as 20%).
Re:Will they revamp paypal? (Score:1)
Re:Will they revamp paypal? (Score:1)
I suppose that's my point. I've never had that, or any other problems with PayPal. I'm only speaking from my personal experience.
And personally, I'd prefer for them to err on the side of caution.
Right. (Score:1)
To err on the side of caution is one thing
Not only will they freeze an account so you can't withdraw your funds, but they will still permit that account to *accept* new payments... so you can have customers paying you for things and you can't refund their money or otherwise touch it.
Nope, according to their FAQ (Score:1)
"PayPal will continue to offer the same Customer Support services now available. We are committed to offering quality customer support to all of our members, and are always looking for ways to expand and improve our services."
So no, they don't plan on improving it from the sounds of it (how can you keep it the same but always looking to improve it?), just keeping it the same.
Re:Will they revamp paypal? (Score:1)
I got burned with a seller who claimed to be from one place, but turned out to be 1/8 of the way around the globe (from Georgian Republic, of all places, Russian mafia hotbed).
He sold a licensed copy of Quark, but delivered only a CD, plus a Win98 user's manual. There were several levels of fraud, including the return address (Constitution Street??? In Tbilisi?), the name, the product, and so on.
Ebay counted it as fraud (and said I'd get payment... I don't think I've recieved it yet).
But Paypal said that since *something* was shipped, regardless of all the levels of fraud, then their insurance would not cover it. Plus, they wouldn't even take a fraud insurance request, initially. That's right, their system locked me out, and refused. I had to find a phone number through the paypallawsuit website, and call to get to step zero.
That being the case, their claims of fraud insurance actually created a haven for thieves, and I dropped them.
However, when Ebay asked if I would buy again through ebay, my response was that I didn't have a way to pay anymore, so probably not. In line with that, we *might* be interested in continuing.
Ebay owns them, lets hope service improves (Score:2, Interesting)
Less Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Low barrier of entry means this and the auction space are ripe, but getting traction in it is hard.
What concerns me the most is the service aspect of the deal. PayPal has a bad reputation [paypalsucks.com], but there is hope it will it will improve [pcworld.com].
---
Go Daddy President Interview [compunotes.com]
Re:Less Competition (Score:5, Informative)
They charge absolutely no transaction fees (well, at least so far -- but I'm sure that'd change if they got popular enough).
Honestly, I think much of PayPal's bad reputation would have been mirrored by any of these alternative online payment services, had they grown as large and as quickly as PayPal did.
It's easy to claim your cust. service is "much more responsive" when you only have 1/20th. the number of users.
Re:Less Competition (Score:1)
Re:Less Competition (Score:5, Interesting)
The merchant account thing is getting a little better, though it's still a PITB to set up ("picture of my inventory? I sell digital goods..."), probably bank of america has the best deal currently.
I guess there can only be one Internet money though.
Re:Less Competition (Score:1)
That should give paypal the edge even if there is a boom soon.
Sorry, anypay, so long e-gold (Score:3, Insightful)
The name of the game for online transactions is building a critical mass of transactors. That's why eBay has no real competition in the online auction game, despite well engineered attempts by players with deep pockets, like Yahoo and Microsoft.
The same goes for PayPal. They realized they had to build a critical mass of customers quickly, so they made it easy to sign up and offerred cash incentives. By the time anybody else discovered this market, it was just too late.
I agree the absence of competition is a Bad Thing. But side-by-side transaction systems isn't going to create competition -- nobody has any incentive to sign up with the minor players. If you want a transaction monopoly to give up being a monopoly, you have to force it to open up its system.
finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe now, electronic cash will become far more acceptable, and smaller vendors will be able to open shop online without having to bow down to Visa and Mastercard's absurd policies. (or having to demand cash payment, which makes online business meaningless really.)
EBay has shown auctions can be done effectively online, now maybe they'll show that E-Cash can be done as well.
The need for a better cash (Score:5, Interesting)
What we need is something that is trustworthy, anonymous (private from the prying eyes of 3rd parties), indenpendent of a government monetary authority or any centralized authority, easy to send and transfer electronicly, and with general predictability and liquidity in value.
for anonymity I was thinking there might be some kind of a scheme where you could reveal the identity of the selling party if you were willing to sacrifice the value of the digital cash they gave you.
Also, perhaps there's some type of a need, like computing cycles, storage, or some type of computing service that would have market value that could be actuated by this form of digital cash.
any thoughts?
Re:The need for a better cash (Score:2)
I don't think you think "Anonymity" means what I think it means!
Re:The need for a better cash (Score:2)
I don't think it can be totally anonymous, at least for transactions that involve a physical exchange of goods. For those transactions, all you would want is anonimity from 3rd parties like the government.
For other transactions, you would probably want just enough of a leash to prevent fraud.
Re:The need for a better cash (Score:2)
E-cash cannot be independent of some authority. (Score:3, Informative)
The only thing that gives any form of money value is endorsement by some large entity. The pieces of paper in your wallet are called "notes" for a reason - they're statements by the government to the effect that the bearer of the note has control of a certain amount of capital. Once upon a time this actually correlated with a certain amount of gold (e.g. for the US) or silver (e.g. for England), but even without the correlation, the principle remains. The reason paper money has value is that the government says it has value.
Similarly, the reason a cheque or money order has value is that your bank says it has value.
Take away the backing authority, and you lose the value of any e-cash you'd implement. Whether it's the government or a bank or a company like PayPal or Ebay, you need _someone_.
I'd personally prefer it be the government, but I'm one of those communist Canadians
Re:E-cash cannot be independent of some authority. (Score:2)
That is wrong, it is not about endorcement - but coercion. The reason why gold has value is because it was a limited resource, and the reason money has value is because it is backed up by the coercive force of government - eg if got a mansion via barter and trade of goods and services, the government would require me to convert it to a cash value and pay a large amount of taxes, which it will not accept in any other currency. That creates an artificial demand for dollars, which give it a market value.
Value happens inspite of central authority, not because of it. You don't need a central authority to have value - if I gave you a 4000$ equiv block of palladium, would you turn it away because no central authority would accept it as tender?
I don't see any reason to assume we couldn't have a digital equivalent.
Re:E-cash cannot be independent of some authority. (Score:2)
Gold only has value because it historically has had value. What actual use is it, after all?
Similarly, MS stock is technically worthless - there's never been a dividend, probably never will be. The shares are worth money only because enough people think they should be.
Re:E-cash cannot be independent of some authority. (Score:2)
Look inside your computer...you'll find lots of gold-plated connectors. Some people (women, gangsta rappers, etc.) also seem to like wearing large amounts of it, though I'll concede that this isn't particularly "useful."
Re:E-cash cannot be independent of some authority. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you were giving it away, probably not. If you were trying to trade me something for it, probably, unless you were losing very badly on the deal. After shipping and finding a buyer and getting screwed by that buyer, I could maybe get a couple hundred bucks for that block of palladium, and that's after spending several days trying to hunt down a buyer and making the exchange.
Money has value not only because it's wanted by the US government; the fact is, it would be infeasible for every Wal-Mart cashier to make barter for anything the customer came up with. If the government stopped making or supporting any type of money, then Wal-Mart would have to find some way to take your barter at a standardized rate, and then would then give you Wal-Mart bucks to give to the cashier. Many companies would probably pay you in Wal-Mart bucks - you can have 30 thousand dollars worth of computers, which will depreciate quickly and you'll have to lug around in your car to trade and make sure they don't get broken, or you can have 20 thousand Wal-Mart bucks, which you can hand into the cashier for food without question.
I don't see any reason to assume we couldn't have a digital equivalent.
You said it yourself: why gold has value is because it was a limited resource, and the reason money has value is because it is backed up by the coercive force of government
There's no such thing as a digital limited resource; with complex enough cryptographical tricks, you can get unique digitial strings, but they aren't a limited resource - the only way to make them valuable is the backing of a central authority.
Re:E-cash can be independent of some authority. (Score:1, Insightful)
a big backing authority is by far the most likely way for "e-cash" to catch on though, yes.
I'd also like to point out that PayPal is not anything like cash. It's more like "e-debit-card".
But (Score:5, Funny)
BIN (Score:1)
This option disappears
once a bid is placed.
Re:But (Score:2, Funny)
E-Bay - Grey Commerce Beast (Score:3, Interesting)
. And of course fix those neutral ratings against Microsoft's e-bay account [slashdot.org]
I Almost accepted a job with paypal last weel - Nice people, nice offices, lousy commute, but I really declined because it would have made me a small part of an already large venture, now that this is through I'd be an even smaller part of this grey commerce beast. (It was one of 4 offers)
In a related story... (Score:5, Funny)
Better call the FBI (Score:5, Funny)
It turns out they just fell for some Finnish guy's scam (never send $1.5B of stock to a P.O. box!). He claimed he was selling PayPal "for a friend", but oddly became angry upon suggestion of sending it C.O.D. Unfortunately, due to their toothless fraud protection policies, it looks like they're just gonna have to suck it up and take the loss.
Better luck next time, eBay! They probably should have bought PayPal through an escrow service...
Ahhh, that's why (Score:1)
eBay (Score:5, Insightful)
All in all, I think eBay is a really good system. I hope it stays that way, and doesn't turn to poop because some corporate jerk wants to be greedy.
Only for new features (Re:eBay) (Score:2)
Most companies charge for new features, though many implement them as free in the beginning to get clients hooked. Look at all the new stuff that's become more readily available on cellphones in the past few years. A lot of people doesn't bother subscribing to extra feautures, but I'm sure somebody pays it or they wouldn't be offered
Introducing ePal (Score:1)
Russian hackers / PayPal scam (Score:5, Informative)
The sending IP was an AOL address: ACC1D4A2.ipt.aol.com [172.193.212.162]
The "click here" links, which I've broken for obvious reasons in the email below, led to this URL:
http://www.paypal.com@%77%77%77.%61%7A.%72%
Which, unencoded, is:
http://www.paypal.com@http://www.az.ru/ppd/
And sure enough, it is an (insecure) page on www.az.ru asking you to enter your PayPal email address and password to "confirm" your account. If this is an old scam (this particular one; I was spoofing login screens on my college network in the 80s!), I haven't heard about it.
Here's the e-mail:
----------------------
Dear PayPal Customer,
This e-mail is to inform you of a recent update we have made to our systems. To avoid service interruption we require that you confirm your account as soon as possible. Please click here [slashdot.org] and take a moment to confirm your account.
Please follow the following steps:
1.) Click here [slashdot.org] to confirm your account.
2.) Your account will be updated in our system and you may continue using PayPal services without any interruptions.
Please note: If you fail to update your account, it will be 'flagged' with restricted status.
Thank you,
The Paypal Staff
***
Do not reply to this e-mail. For assistance, contact the customer service team.
***
mandatory link (Score:2, Informative)
Here come the lawsuits. (Score:3, Insightful)
now ebay is involving themselves in the financial end as well... this will make things more complicated.
Re:Here come the lawsuits. (Score:1)
now ebay is involving themselves in the financial end as well... this will make things more complicated.
You bring up a very important point: when an organization gets involved in more things, it gets harder to manage. If this principle was commonly understood, it would have profound political implications. It implies that there's a practical limit to how large a corporation can get (since it can't use force to get involved in more things it can manage profitable), and that the more things government gets involved with (using force), the worse it gets at managing all of them.
PayPal rules - hope it doesn't change (Score:5, Interesting)
It took only a few minutes to sign up and add their canned HTML forms to my web site.
I write free web books, and I use PayPal to accept donations and it is also useful for accepting payment for consulting services and the few commercial products that I sell.
I did a fair amount of research re: getting a merchant account, etc., but I think that PayPal works out a little cheaper for me; it is also zero hassle.
One possible thing to worry about: they do have the right to freeze your bank account if a customer ever wants a refund and you don't have funds to cover the refund in your PayPal account. I have never been asked for a refund (after many, many transactions) but for safety I always just leave some money in my PayPal account - the interest that I loose in a year doing this is negligible compared to the costs of a merchant account, etc.
-Mark
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Hrm... (Score:1)
If you can't beat 'em... (Score:2, Funny)
Last Post! (Score:1)
While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain."
-- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Introducing competition. (Score:1)