Could PayPal Be an In-Store Option?

daria42 writes "PayPal has long been one of the most-used payment options on the Internet; its history serving eBay's millions of users has now expanded into a wider remit across many e-commerce sites. But will the company ever become a valid option for point of sale payments at actual physical retail stores? Yes, according to PayPal's global president Scott Thompson — and PayPal's working on that right now, with one option based on mobile phones on the way and two others in development. It'll be interesting to see how far the company gets with its plans; personally I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be using such a system."

But remember

[stinerman]

They're not a bank!

If this went through, I'd be hard pressed to see how they could keep up that facade.

Re:Looking for trouble

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I had a similar experience and resolved it by closing the checking account. PayPal then removed the account and reverted my PayPal account to 'unverified'. I didn't care until some years later when I hit the $10,000 limit that I was previously unaware of. Now I just enter my credit card number. It works to do this even on eBay purchases.

PayPal is a bank in Luxembourg

[tepples]

Until PayPal is regulated under the same accountability as a bank

It already is. In Europe, PayPal Europe SARL has operated for nearly four years as a bank.

Re:I have a debit card with chip-and-pin.

[npsimons]

Credit card companies, as much maligned as they are, treat their customers (both vendors and shoppers) far better than Paypal has ever done for their own customers.

Credit card companies are maligned for a reason: they acted just like Paypal before the eeebil gubbermint stepped in and and regulated them. If it weren't for government regulations, people would be still getting fucked over by CC companies and banks (and despite the regulations, people *still* get screwed). This is why Paypal keeps wanting to play it both ways and insist "we're not a bank!" because it means they'd be subject to a whole pile of rules to prevent exactly what they do.

What would be the point?

[John Pfeiffer]

The PayPal debit card already fills this role. I mostly use mine for sites that don't take PayPal, but my younger sister uses it as her primary means of paying for stuff in the real world. On countless occasions she's actually called on her cellphone and been like "Hey, I'm at X, do you need anything?" because it's easy for her to swing by on her way home, and I'll be like "Sure!" and put the money in her account.

I remember the first time I did that, she called while she was in line at McDonald's because she had forgotten something, and I asked her where she was, and was like "Man, I haven't had anything to eat yet today..." and it just popped into my head. *Ding!* Barely five minutes later I had food-like substance in the shape of a hamburger, and a serving of fries.

Of course, it also means she's always nagging me to lend her money by putting it in her PayPal...