Yahoo Shuts Down Their PayPal Competitor 257
LostCluster writes "MSNBC and ZDnet are both reporting that Yahoo and HSBC have announced a shutdown plan for their PayDirect service which was their rival to PayPal. Since CitiBank abandoned their c2it service last year, PayPal now seems to be a monopoly by default." There are other players in this field, though, like bidpay and worldpay.
I have never understood... (Score:3, Insightful)
If a company won't take my credit card, I don't purchase their merchandise, period.
Paypal still poorly integrated with eBay (Score:2, Insightful)
A monopoly? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, timothy did the mostly right thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The problem: (Score:3, Insightful)
what you need is co-operation between the competing services.
around here we dont' have a monopoly in banking services.. but transferring money between banks is _easy_ because they co-operate.
No Alternatives (Score:3, Insightful)
Killer features: no sign up cost, no monthly (yearly, whatever) fee, low transaction costs, works around the world, accepts all major credit cards, as well as other payment methods.
Only two disadvantages I can identify: buyers need to create an account (unless paying to an US business), and PayPal's...reputation.
Re:I have never understood... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Futures (Score:2, Insightful)
That sounds similar to the way in which Netscape Navigator was the clear leader in the web browser market until a less expensive alternative [microsoft.com] was developed.
Re:I have never understood... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No Alternatives (Score:1, Insightful)
I'd agree with you, but not necessarily for the reason you think
There are no better alternatives to PayPal. Which means that the best system is still untrustworthy, imposes their religious beliefs on you, is known to steal from their customers, has a ridiculous EULA which would prevent anyone with a knowledge of law from using them, refuses accounts arbitrarily (either by country, or just because they dislike you), and did I mention that I'm not going to accept a PayPal EULA just to pay you. Not a chance.
There are plenty of situations where PayPal is the only option. Unfortunatly, that means that there are a lot of situations where stuff doesn't get sold because of a lack of reasonable payment options. And that's just from the perspective of a "buyer" -- I can only imagine, from some of the stories, how much worse it would be trying to sell stuff using PayPal
One thing that makes me mad about Paypal (Score:3, Insightful)
They get money for the listing, AND money from your money.
If they were a nice company like Google, one or the other would be free if you used both eBay and Paypal on a given sale, but like most greedy coroporations they don't care about making their customers happy, they care about making the maximum amount of money from their customers. [/rant]
Re:I have never understood... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the smart thing to do would be to not trust paypal and do a chargeback at the same time as you file a complaint with them.
I don't buy that it takes 60 days to check if someone conned you. Has anyone managed to get their money back through this complaint system? Please post your stories.
Free Speech, Exactly (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you mean reward? That's _exactly_ the line between freedom and censorship - you don't like the word, fine. But please don't try to tell me what words I should and should not use.
The dynamics of yelling FIRE in a theater are similar to saying the F word in front of children
No they ain't!. The former might result in a panic and thus people actually being hurt. Who you say fuck in front of is a manner of your personal fucking taste.
I guess darwin will take care of it in time anyway.
If only evolution always followed what I think is right...
Re:I have never understood... (Score:3, Insightful)
First, I must appologize for not reading past this line.
But to point out what i was saying, paypal is NOT a credit card.
If you would have used your credit card, you dont even have to talk to paypal, you tell your credit card company the charge was fradulant and they issue the charge back, and you would have your money with no problems.
If *you* use paypal as the buyer (as well as the vender using them as the seller) this type of thing can and will happen.
If you use a credit card merchant however, and the vender uses paypal (or anything else for that matter), you will have the control.
I was very specific in my wording on the first post about that.
You did not use a credit card with your merchant, so you effectlvly handed over cash. That is bad. Never do that.
Re:Nigging out? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why don't the banks implement this? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nigging out? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or better yet, we could all learn the proper definitions of the words.
Oh wait, that assumes the liability of effort onto the part of the ignorant. You're right, let's outlaw uncommon words that sound vaguely similar to common offensive words. I hearby renege all uncommon words and niggardly parse to you all a cleansed vocabulary.
Oops!
Re:I have never understood... (Score:3, Insightful)
Paypal no longer has such worries, so expect the quality of service and customer service to only go down.
I don't like the liberty dollor (Score:3, Insightful)
I was interested in this 'money'. So I went to there site. Learned a little about.. Everything that I was learning about it just seemed so Anti-Government. Such as You don't have a to pay taxes.. Know what taxes keep this country going.. If you arn't going to pay taxes (honestly) Then get out. I don't want to pick up your burden because you found a "legal out" while legal isn't ethical.
Another thing I found was that it is a backed currency, Joy so I can trade in my liberty notes for silver.. Tell me how is that going to help me if I need food. As for the dollar being fiat so what so is silver. Silver has no value unless it can be used for something usefull. When you get down to it no many is really value backed unless it is accepted.. So if everyone needs food but all they have is silver.. Silver is useless.. ( Unless it's being used as a conductive)
I will not accept liberty money.. And again I hate how they try to pass it off as "regular money"
Paypal is a good idea... When it works. (Score:3, Insightful)
Its how they handle problems that is the problem.
Here in australia, I can log into my online banking and transfer money directly to any australian bank account with any other bank.
If banks worldwide got together and made that possible for the entire world (just think of all the Bank Fees they would be able to charge for the privilage) it would put an end to crap like Paycrud.
Re:Why do you think no one uses it? (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason many e-gold-accepting sites look pretty poor is because they are almost always owner-designer-operator jobs of someone doing it all himself. You are comparing a garage sale with a frigging strip mall and then wonder why there is no cafeteria in the garage.
I haven't come accross any pedophilia or similar pervert sites accepting e-gold in quite a while. There were a few early in the year but the more respectable 'exchangers' and their association made it difficult for them to get their ill-gotten gains out of the system.
There is an entire casino site, built specifically for e-gold and other online currency users, which doing rather well for itself. Of course, they are actually pros and not one of the cut and paste carder jobs the web is rampant with.
Lastly, there are 1.5 million e-gold accounts, about half of which are funded, which isn't huge, but sizeable.
Credit cards are pro consumer, charge backs are easy for buyers, fraud is rampant.
e-gold is pro-merchants, charge backs are impossible, fraud is reasonably moderate, and e-gold does react to complaints by suspending accounts, but you need a court order to get more details.
PayPal is pro PayPal. The charge back from both ends, play buyers against sellers and keep the loot from both sides. At least that is what used to happen quite frequently.
Imagine you sell some kit for a grand and six months later PayPal grabs a grand from your bank account and tells you the charge was reversed, because the buyer was a crook. Imagine then you personally know the buyer and know he's not a crook. Worse, imagine the buyer calls you and tells you that P(r)ayPal took the money off his account and off the account of someone who had bought something from him earlier, as well.
That used to be PayPal. I'm not sure if they still are, but it did happen to us, so I believe every single word at www.paypal-warning.com
Now go to
http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=310408
Re:Why do you think no one uses it? (Score:1, Insightful)
PayPal is funded with credit cards and has the risk of credit cards. e-gold carries very little risk for the merchant. It's a 'harder' currency. One might use PayPal to buy consumer merchandise, but one could use e-gold to buy a house, a car, or a gyrocopter. You could never do that with PayPal.
SnowDog