I know other countries have similar systems, but the US being a holdout and having terrible money transfer options despite being a massive market in the tech space maybe (hopefully?) is the reason that hasn't already happened?
I don't feel like I know enough to make any predictions, I'm just hopeful.
FedNow is going to be fine, just like ACH but faster. PayPal sucks in a lot of ways, but there are reasons you would use it over an actual money sending service like Zelle, FedNow or Wise. For what it's worth it's pretty rare that I have been materially adversely affected by the latency of an ACH payment. That's not to say I don't welcome FedNow with open arms, though, I very much do.
What about every time you make a credit card payment (and associated fees)?
PP recently created their own scam^Wstablecoin PYUSD[1]
[1] https://www.paypal.com/us/digital-wallet/manage-money/crypto...
But they take paypal also, so no bother. Do the transaction on paypal.
This kind of thing happens maybe once every couple of months for me, and is why I keep paypal around.
Edit to add: I think some UK banks are much more trigger-happy than the global average when it comes to flagging transactions as possible fraud. I once had to pay my tax bill (to the UK government) by paypal because the debit card transaction was declined.
For a good year, Barclays would ask me if my monthly Oyster purchase, for the same cost, at the same station, on roughly the same day of the month, was actually me doing it. Natwest, similarly, have blocked my "early September, about £1200, to Apple" payment for 5 years in a row now. It's infuriating.
This actually happened to me yesterday, thing is, the merchant doesn’t use paypal or anything except card, so kind of suck it up :/
Had it happen recently in the US when paying for a hotel room. They immediately froze the card when it was swiped through the machine by hotel staff. Clicked yes in the app, and it went through.
PayPal might give some protection but it also freezes some accounts and keep the money. No other service I have heard of have as bad a reputation.
In France (and I'm going to guess similar rules exist in other EU countries), businesses are required to accept at least 2 different payment options. They choose which 2, for example Apple Store accepts cards or ... cash. Buying a Mac with cash is a funny albeit slightly stressful experience.
It was also the case 10-15 years ago. The usage has became much higher, but it was already all right by then.
Except Germany, for cultural reasons.
Having said that, it can bite you in different way. Paypal keep an association of last email used in a transaction with a card number.
For example, I had paid for a vps hosting using paypal payment (without a patpal account) with one card, using my email address in the billing details. Later one we bought something for my partner with the same card, but using her email address in the billing details.
Subsequent payments notifications for my vps hosting were sent to her email address.
Essentially, the buyer is always right, and so, as a buyer, it is very easy to get your money back in case of a problem. The seller is the one who gets all the fees, and needs to justify himself if there is a dispute. Sellers offer PayPal because even though it is really bad for them, it gets them customers.
> To a point, I am suspecting Paypal pretends to be the random online stranger that sent me the money and then disputed it
I would highly doubt this.
Most likely, they give money to a random email address using a stolen card, then dispute it and receive that money back, but now it's clean money because it comes from Paypal.
Some customers decides to try to get it for free by paying and then creating a PayPal claim by lying that someone else made the purchases or that it was not delivered. And this usually works, and people tell others, so more people abuse it.
Basically every single time someone tries to commit "friendly fraud" as the card networks calls and it(customer tries to scam seller by lying), there are a handful of transactions from one person. PayPal usually rules 90 % of the cases in favor of the buyer.
However, there can be 20 purchases during just a couple of hours from one person and card, and somehow PayPal is certain that purchase 6 and 10 was legit, while the rest was someone who used the card without permission. That seems probable, right? Even on a account with a flawless record for over 10 years I've had this happen so many times. Usually when this happens I have to spend hours on this and contact PayPal by phone to get the money back. Usually the customer gets the money too, for some absurd reason.
PayPal's fraud system is absolutely garbage, and so is the standard email support. Contacting account managers at least gives you what seems to be a human response.
I too got my PayPal account limited in 2012 as a result of a scammer who abused PayPal disputes.
The solution is super simple: make buyers pay to create PayPal claims and use the money to have real people quickly look over the cases. This is similar to how cases are handled for card networks.
Was the claim legit? Money back, including the claim fee. The merchant has to pay a fee, same way as today.
Was the claim not legit? Basically free money for PayPal, and some should probably be shared with the merchant for helping out with solving the fake claim.
At least in europe the scams on PayPal has mostly shifted from "unauthorized use" to "not delivered" as a result of strong consumer authentication.
In the last year I had multiple cases of people contacting me out of the blue and asking if I could draw a picture of their nephew's favourite dog (it is always a dog, and it is always for their nephew whose birthday is coming soon so there is an implicit sense of urgency).
I never actually pursued this stuff because it was obviously a scam of some kind (I draw mostly nudes, dogs or animals in general amount to less than 1% of my production so far, so someone starting their message with "I just adore your style can you please draw a dog for me..." is obviously either a scammer or blind).
Another clear sign is that they are obviously following a script (my standard answer is something alongside the lines of "Gee, thanks, but I do not really work on commissions, and I don't draw animals anyway" to which they would infallibly answer "Fantastic, would 2500USD be ok for you?" - at this point I just block them).
But I am still a bit confused about what the angle would be for this type of scams: assuming they send me 100$ and then open a claim against me because I did not deliver... at most they would get 100$ back after a few days. There is no actual profit, right? (I am considering one of my drawings basically worthless, I draw on paper, usually a5 or smaller).
Is this a laundering schema? What would they get out of it? (There are also lots of people asking to buy my stuff for NFT, I did not fall for that, either, but some other artist on IG explained to me that usually they ask you to create an account on some third party site... the account requires a fee, and after you have paid for it the NFT guy will just disappear - so in that case the way they get money from you is clear... but I still don't get how it would work in case of a physical item).
Any clues?
Last I checked, Google's survey app inexplicably pays out to PayPal even though they have Google Wallet, and doubly inexplicably will only pay to what it thinks your email address is with no option to change it. So… someone in Brazil has my survey payments.
As in, I thought about it and that's the reason I haven't done it.
I also coincidentally am having a spat with Paypal at the moment, hence my new username.
