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Has anyone got rid of their PayPal account?
I used to rely on PayPal heavily for eBay purchases and the odd purchase outside of eBay. But it seems now eBay allows you to use a credit card directly on the site, and most other online stores if they accept PayPal payments, they also accept credit cards directly. Maybe its safe to say I can delete my PayPal account and not look back? It seems like an unnecessary middle man.
Most sites that take PayPal allow you to checkout without a PayPal account. They redirect you to PayPal, and you can just enter your card info without logging in. You just have to ignore their account nag screens.
(At least this is how it worked in the past)
I use paypal to accept international payments, it just makes things easier.
Direct bank transfer needs me to know a lot of information about my bank, some of which may not be easily available, and there's also the anxiety of not knowing anything about the money for 1 or 2 weeks until the transaction succeeds or fails.
There are alternatives to it but it may not be available in other countries, or it may be still too new and people and companies don't know about it (Stripe), or both (also Stripe). Since paypal is old and big it is usually available everywhere and people feel comfortable using it.
So I use paypal because it gives me more peace of mind. With paypal the money appears immediately in my account and moving the money from paypal to my bank account is usually faster than direct bank transfer. And yes the fees are high but I prefer less money on my pocket than more anxiety on my mind.
Edit: Since I didn't make it clear, technically I could use something better to accept payments, it doesn't need to be available in all the countries just mine, but companies usually have a specific list of options for transfering money, most of the time paypal is in that list.
I still use PayPal quite frequently as well, also for peace of mind. But for me, that peace of mind comes from not needing to give other less secure/trustworthy sites my credit card or banking information, which has bit me in the ass numerous times in the past due to data leaks, account breaches, etc. And the other major reason I use Paypal for most transactions is because I like the convenience of being able to manage all my recurring payments in one place, so I can more easily keep track of and cancel them when needed. Both of which are well worth the added fees, IMO.
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Yeah, I have looked at it before (after you mentioned it to me a while back), but haven't taken the plunge yet... Partly because I'm lazy, but mostly because I'm simply not dissatisfied enough with Paypal to make the effort to migrate away from it.
Paypal is very useful to me both for paying and receiving money. As a buyer its dispute system has helped me avoid being scammed on several occasions. I'd never use it as a large seller, though. They're awful to sellers.
Though it's possible my account is just so incredibly old it has enough reputation associated with it to avoid triggering any of paypal's infamous random nonsense.
These days, portuguese interbanking technology MB Net can also be used for generating temporary credit card numbers on the fly for online payments at no extra cost, if necessary (I believe they appear to be mastercard from the outside). But that doesn't help me if I'm the one receiving money or if I'm sending money to a friend.
The dispute system is largely why I still have/use paypal. As several frequenters around here know, I'm a car enthusiast, largely old cars with OEM parts no longer in production, and as a result I buy a lot of both used and "new old stock" parts. 99% of the time I get what I paid for, but from time to time I get someone that lied about what the part was, the condition, or don't send all of the pieces and the dispute process or the mere threat of using it on a seller is good enough to either get a full refund or partial one equivalent to the missing/misleading parts.
This happened just a month or so ago. Purchased a $1,300 part for one of my cars, it arrived shoddily shipped and missing a $200 component. I contacted the seller and his response amounted to "Eh, it's still worth $1,300 without that part." I, obviously, disagreed and he said I could "ship it back to him and he'll refund my money minus the shipping cost to get it to me". Being that he didn't typically use paypal, and wanted me to use cashapp at first, I explained how the dispute process worked and that we could either handle it ourselves or paypal would handle it, including him having to pay the return shipping and I'd be refunded everything, making him out of the (high) shipping cost twice. I received a $200 refund via cashapp.
Paypal is also just easier for international payments and there are a ton of extremely small mom and pop car parts shops that sell niche items to a very small customer base that just don't bother with setting up an online storefront and just have an old paypal link, address, or will send you an invoice from paypal once you've placed your order over the phone or via email.
For whatever one anecdote is worth, I've been using paypal as a seller, both for my current and previous businesses, for well over a decade and I've never had a problem. They've been as helpful as they have been when I've been the buyer and saved me a LOT of money handling international payments over the years. I'm not sure I count as a "large" seller though.
You hear about the times they are bad - and people have had terrible experiences with them - but you don't hear about the people who don't have a problem. That said they are AWFUL to anyone working even vaguely adjacent to drugs or sex or anything fun.
I did get rid of mine. I haven't made a single paypal payment in at least five years.
Once in a while I'll come across a business that wants paypal and is rejecting my card number. They just lose a sale. It's extremely rare, too.
Their prevalence is reflected in their stock (PYPL), which has been in freefall since October. Competitors have caught up, period. Their only redeeming potential is that they own Venmo, but I would not bet on it.
Venmo is the most bloated and intimidating of the three apps I've used for sending money to peers. Any UI that I use for managing money should be dead simple. Keep the cognitive load and distractions low. Minimize the opportunity for the user to fat finger something or make a mistake.
Apple Pay is the best, followed closely by the Cash App. Venmo just has way too much other shit going on in the app. It feels like it's trying to become a social network.
This is wild to me. Canada has e-Transfers via bank, which are often a 100% free service (briefly my bank charged $.50 per, but that got rescinded quickly). You go to your bank website, send the eTransfer to someone's email with a passphrase, then they can deposit it directly into their account via their bank website.
Sometimes an app or service pops up here now and then, but they always fail because e-Transfer is just superior. Nothing to download, no new accounts to make, free, simple. I'm so sick of everyone having a special, terrible app so it's nice that e-Transfer is so ubiquitous here.
Banks in the US do this as well, but most of the big banks are way behind on making the experience "user friendly" on the go. Just pulling out my phone and sending my friend $25 for dinner in an iMessage while they are writing in the tip is way easier than anything my bank does.
Apply Pay and the Cash App are also free, with the option to expedite deposits into your account for a percentage. I've never seen a free transaction take more than two business days to clear.
Tbf there's practically the same thing in the US via Zelle, but it doesn't tend to be used for "casual" purposes (e.g if you need to split dinner, you'd usually do it with venmo or cashapp - but you might pay rent with zelle). Not exactly sure why - might just be a UI thing.
I like it, I am on the verge of getting rid of mine. Do you sell items on eBay? I am wondering if you can receive a payment for an item without the use of PayPal. The fees were always egregious and I would lose a ton of money just selling personal items.
I don't know about receiving ebay payments, sorry. Whatever online services I use to receive payments usually accept bank accounts direct deposit or ACH. Or for actual invoicing, I use Stripe (and thus can take card payments). According to this page, it sounds like ebay supports direct payments to bank accounts as well (tbh as any sane business should).
In fact, I recently reported a security issue via BugCrowd, and discovered that although they support paypal, they actively discourage it by warning about high fees and making you go through extra hoops to enable the option to add a paypal account. I love it.
I use and love Wise (aka TransferWise) for the banking side of things, both for personal and business. I do highly recommend them, as they allow you to hold balances in multiple currencies and get real bank account details. Here is a referral link, if you feel so inclined.
I deleted my account after obscuring as much of my personal information on the account that I could, feels great to be done with them!
Thanks for your recommendation, I will check it out!
FWIW, I never had an account. I used to have occasional issues paying online and would very rarely rely on other people. That changed once I figured out how card payments work online. Ever since then, I have only once "needed" a PayPal account: For sending a friend some money. Well, he has a IBAN too, so that was no problem either.
It's handy for cross-border artisanal purchases IME, but that's it for me. I've only ever used it to buy bespoke computer hardware or electronics. I'd like to get rid of it but it seems like everyone and their mothers are making janky money transfer apps these days and Paypal seems to be the one transfer app everyone still has, so it's handy in that I don't have to download 20 different apps I guess.
Good thought. For awhile now, I've only actually needed/used it, once every 1-2 years.
Is there any actual difficulty in shutting it down?
no, surprisingly it was quite easy. There is a deactivate account button right on one of the settings pages.