Paypal Reverses Payments Made To Indians 509
bhagwad writes "Beginning January 28, Paypal has been reversing the payments made to any Indian provider of services. In addition, Indian users have been unable to withdraw their money to their bank accounts. As a result, a large number of Indian Paypal accounts have negative balances running into the thousands of dollars. The worst part is that users weren't informed beforehand — the funds were just whisked away. Indian providers have gone ballistic, with over 2,000 posts on a thread on the reversal of payments and over 700 posts on this thread about the delay in transfers. Paypal hasn't given any explanation to this behavior other than they're looking into it. Although Paypal claims in the above blog post that payments made for 'Services' are not being reversed, this is not true. All payments not made for 'Goods' with a shipping address have been reversed — in fact, the Paypal e-mail tells the Indian sellers to encourage their clients to lie and claim that they're paying for goods with a shipping address instead."
Makes me wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why anyone trusts PayPal with their money.
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody trusts Paypal, but there is no viable alternative. Not yet, anyway, but that can't take long in light of these shenenigans.
Banking Reform (Score:5, Insightful)
Banking reform in the US should include subjecting PayPal to all the rules and regulations that apply to banks. I find it strange how they've managed to avoid being classed as a bank all these years in the first place. Current regulations leave a lot to be desired, but making PayPal adhere to them would be a good first step.
Re:PalPal Sucks! (Score:2, Insightful)
Ebay has given paypal a monopoly payments for their auctions. this is anti competitive and should be stopped.
Yet another reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Why PayPal needs to be regulated as a bank, and why I refuse to use it.
Re:Paypal is not a bank (Score:4, Insightful)
No you are completely and utterly wrong. There is a very authoritative document from the Fed that explains how banks expand the money supply, but a simple starting point for you would be the wiki page on Fractional Reserve Banking [wikipedia.org].
Re:Paypal is not a bank (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't seem to understand what a bank is. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, they only hold, transfer, convert, store, send, give cashback bonuses, interest, etc. They are nothing like a bank at all.
This is not what makes a bank a bank.
What makes a bank a bank and the reason they are more tightly regulated (though that's laughable) is that banks create and destroy money. Banks are a form of privatised money creation.
Paypal on the other hand simply move money from one person to another. They neither create nor destroy money. I would argue that no matter how bad their customer service, their costs or the problems they cause individuals, the paypal organisation is economically far more benign than your local bank.
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:2, Insightful)
Digital records can be easily altered and it takes tools most banks don't have to tell when and by whom. Paper records are more secure.
Holy shit (Score:2, Insightful)
Somebody used "begging the question" correctly.
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:1, Insightful)
No, it's a fee you pay for a regular wire transfer from one bank to another.
In the USA, anyway. I know this is starting to go off-topic, but why do people put up with this? I'm from Germany, and wire transfers are free (and this is true for all banks, not just some); I understand that the whole "mailing cheques" thing in the USA arose as a result of these fees, but why do banks get away with charging them in the first place?
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
They've been saying that about the shenanigans since the beginning of the 2000s.
The fact is that Paypal acts like a bank but without any of the regulations. A bank can't freeze your assets and the like just because they don't like you or what you do -- only the government can do that. Something's got to give here: the last crisis showed banks can't regulate themselves on a trustworthy level.
There are alternatives: google checkout and a myriad of others. Since ebay doesn't allow competition to their paypal - it makes it harder though...
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Burning down all the banks.
Its 2010; paper checks should hardly ever be necessary anymore.
The banks like it that way. In most places (outside the US), bank transfers are free. Not in the US. And the banks like it that way, so it will never change. It isn't about tech, it's about business practices.
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
The beauty is that you don't really have to trust PayPal. I usually transfer money out of my PayPal account within minutes of it arriving there, and I have made sure never to authorize PayPal to withdraw from any bank account I have.
Just make sure you have a backup plan so that if / when PayPal suspends your account for some stupid reason you have somewhere else for customers to go.
Re:Banking Reform (Score:3, Insightful)
People may *use* PayPal like a bank but if they do they are misusing it.
PayPal is not your bank. PayPal is the cash till in your register. No business owner leaves cash accumulating in their register day after day. They count it and clear it out at the end of each day and bank it because the register is a fundamentally insecure and unreliable place. If people treated PayPal more like that there would be less issues (not saying PayPal doesn't have problems - just that people's tendency to accumulate large balances is part of the problem).
If your turnover is such that large balances accumulate even inside a single day then you should really be getting a merchant account somewhere and doing things properly.
Fail to see the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anyone else see that as a good opportunity to cease their relationship with PayPay (for those stupid enough to have kept using them anytime in the past, oh, decade)?
Remember - Not a bank, by their own maneuverings. You can't actually owe PayPal money, because they don't sell anything or provide any (direct for-cost) services. Sure, you can owe their other customers money, but PayPal itself?
Negative balance? Yeah, time to close that account. Thanks, PayPal, but you can keep "my" negative money. Funny thing, about forced arbitration clauses - You can stack the system as much in your favor as you want, but to get government sponsored armed thugs to go shake down your clients, you need to step in to a real court of law and risk setting some seriously unfavorable precedents.
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
starting in 2018, British banks won't be using personal checks any more.
Indeed, UK has many problems :-)
The advantage of a simple piece of paper is that it is not tied to any technology. Maybe Londoners are well connected, but a good part of rural USA doesn't have computers and doesn't really even need them. They use checks to pay for everything. A payment can be concluded in the middle of a field, if necessary. You can't do that with a card or a telephone.
This also connects with the problem of receiving payments. If you are a small business that, say, repairs stuff, how are you going to receive non-cash payments from your customers? Check is the only method where you do not incur extra costs. So why in the world would you want to pay a few percent of your revenue (not even profit!) for the service?
The decision to do away with checks can be only seen as one, last push of credit card companies to insert themselves into the payment stream. And of course banks would be glad to reduce their costs even further, holding billions in other people's money without even having to work for it.
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think you quite understand. It's not practical, not because of technical reasons, but because the banks aren't interested in not charging you money.
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MOD THIS UP!!! PAYPAL NEEDS TO DIE. (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that gunpal is the official payment processor of http://www.auctionarms.com/ [auctionarms.com] [auctionarms.com] It's not some little fly-by-night company.
As a person who has never heard of "auctionarms.com" until this very moment, I don't understand how this precludes them from being a "fly-by-night" company. And even if working with this somewhat obscure website (at least I have never heard of it) gives it a patina of legitimacy, that still means nothing. Ebay is a VERY large and popular company, meaning (by your logic) Paypal is not a fly-by-night company, but Paypal still sucks and operates in the most ethically dubious of manners.
Sorry for being a bit confrontational. I've always viewed Paypal, and any other company that operates in the same niche as highly dubious. And just having the endorsement of the NRA doesn't cut it. I have nothing against the NRA, but they do, often, attract the lunatic fringe. The association itself, doesn't lend too much credibility.
Checks great for banks, suck for the rest of us (Score:1, Insightful)
Posting anon not to undo moderation.
Paper checks are only slightly safer than cash. They are still subject to loss or theft, and there's all the additional hassle of signing and going to the bank to deposit. If stolen by someone familiar with your friend's signature (easy enough via dumpster diving), or if the entity cashing the check doesn't care or have any means of knowing the proper signature, the check is "endorsed" and cashed and away the thief goes.
I've lived in Japan, and there it's routine to send money via bank transfers. I paid my dues for a professional organization this way, and that was around US $100. I've repaid a friend via bank transfer too. It's very easy, can be done at any of your bank's ATMs or via your bank's website, and makes everything much simpler.
Banks do charge a nominal fee for this, I think ¥420 last I checked (think $4.20 for you USians reading this), so it only makes sense for amounts above a certain threshold, but even so, not having to mess around with a checkbook and wonder if / when someone is going to cash a check is an enormous boon. Your bank balance is always your bank balance, full stop; none of this garbage of having checks floating around uncashed, then hitting your account at unexpected times.
I'll wait for the proverbial flying blue monkeys coming from you-know-where before I'll expect to see US banks switch to something so consumer-friendly -- they love checks, precisely for all the inconveniences that (mostly) fall on the consumer's side. The discrepancy between the balance the bank lists and whatever checks are outstanding is brilliant from a profit-making (petty theft) motive -- it dramatically increases the chances that you might become overdrawn, at which point your bank gets to slam you with all kinds of fun fees. It's all very dodgy.
Ah, well. More evidence the US strangling itself. <sigh.>
Cheers,
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MOD THIS UP!!! PAYPAL NEEDS TO DIE. (Score:3, Insightful)
they do, often, attract the lunatic fringe
and a highly armed lunatic fringe at that. Sounds like a dangerous customer base to screw around with.
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)