Sunday 11 December 2011

Paypal, Facebook and SendMoney ...


I begin this post just quoting the rules for using Send Money.
If you send money within the US:
  • It's FREE if you pay using a bank account or your PayPal balance.
  • Credit or debit card fees are 2.9% plus 30 cents. We don’t offer the choice of receiver or sender paying the fee.
If you send US dollars outside the US:
  • 0.5-2% if you pay with a bank account or PayPal balance. The fee depends on where you send the money.
  • 3.4%-3.9% plus 30 cents if you pay with a credit card or debit card.
If you send money from another country, please refer to the Fee section of the local PayPal User Agreement accessible here.
Mashable and other websites followed this launch. As usual, italian media (the printed one) maybe misunderstood that the "social" side of this application is just the fact that it is linked to Facebook (and so supported by a huge number of potential users).
Paypal is not a really independent, it is a private company. Just to remember something about it, I'm quoting Wikipedia EN or PaypalIsEvil:

The current (2011/07/29) PayPal user agreement is a 26 page long pdf document.[73] If one buys an item from a PayPal merchant, one is agreeing to an additional layer of arbitration beyond the merchant himself. Thus even if the merchant has acted improperly, PayPal has not violated its own policy until the user has gone through an extra arbitration process with PayPal. According to their 34-page (single-spaced) user agreement, "If a sender of a payment files a Chargeback, the credit card issuer, not PayPal, will determine who wins the Chargeback," which confirms that a user can employ the normal (legally mandated) dispute resolution process with his credit card issuer, instead of following PayPal's procedures. A user who reads section 13.7 (on page 27) finds notice that the user may have chargeback rights independent of the dispute resolution procedure privileges granted by the PayPal UA. Section 14.1 is entitled "Contact PayPal First" indicates that in case of a dispute, the user must contact PayPal first.
In 2003, PayPal voluntarily stopped serving as an payment intermediary between gambling websites and their customers who engaged in online gambling. When they quit processing payments within online gambling community, they were the largest payment processor for online gambling transactions. In 2010, PayPal resumed accepting online gambling transactions but only in countries where online gambling is specifically legal and they only service those gambling sites who are properly licenced to operate legally in said jurisdictions. [74]
In September 2005, Richard Kyanka, owner of the website Something Awful, set up an account to collect donations for Hurricane Katrina to be given to the Red Cross. Owing to the high rate at which donations were made, the account was automatically frozen, and Kyanka criticized the time and difficulty involved in getting PayPal's customer service to unfreeze the account. In response to the concerns of Something Awful members over the charity used by PayPal, United Way, Kyanka finally opted to have the money refunded to the donors so that they could donate directly to their charities of choice, though PayPal did not refund exchange and handling fees for international donors.[75][76]
In March 2008, Australian current affairs show Today Tonight aired a segment criticising PayPal, with regard to safety, freezing accounts and customer service.[77]
Several PayPal gripe sites and blog posts[78] have been created complaining of problems such as the freezing of accounts of eCommerce stores if they experience rapid growth, preventing them from being able to pay suppliers and fulfill orders.[79] One such site, Paypalsucks.com,[80] ranked third on a Forbes Magazine listing of "Top Corporate Hate Web Sites" in 2005 based on "hostility" and "entertainment value" of web forum postings and other criteria.[81]
In June 2008, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that, "The evidence available does not support the view that PayPal is the most secure method of payment, or offers the best service for all transactions."[82]
In February 2010, PayPal stopped or reversed all "personal" transactions in or out of India without prior notice. Funds already transferred and transactions that had previously been "completed" were reversed leaving many vendor accounts over-drafted. Companies, contractors and service providers throughout India were left in debt to PayPal for services they had already provided when PayPal, without warning or consent, returned funds vendors had already received and withdrawn.[83]
In spite of its international reach, PayPal has limited functionalites for multi-country users, most notably the impossibility to have bank accounts in several countries, or to have a shipping address in a different country than one's bank account / credit card.
In March 2010, PayPal froze donations to Cryptome, seizing over $5300 of in-transit donations.[84] PayPal refused to inform Cryptome of the reason for this action, claiming that to disclose why the donations had been confiscated would violate Cryptome's own privacy.[85] A week later, PayPal offered an apology, which was rejected by Cryptome founder John Young as "insulting and unacceptable".[86]
In September 2010, PayPal froze the account of Markus Persson, developer of independent video game Minecraft. His account contained around €600,000.[87][88]
In December 2010, PayPal permanently restricted an account used to raise funds for WikiLeaks citing it was in violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy. At a conference in Paris, a PayPal VP, in response to an attendee's question, stated the account was restricted after PayPal was allegedly pressured by the U.S. State Department.[89] Afterwards, PayPal reiterated the decision was based on violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. This was followed by cyber attack on the paypal.com website and a boycott of PayPal, in which some users closed their PayPal account in protest.
In November 2011, PayPal moved all shipping to eBay. This move also forced businesses with multiple users to use only their administrative passwords for all employees, which opens the door to potential account fraud by merchant employees. As a results of this shipping change, many PayPal merchants already frustrated with PayPal fraud protection moved their shipping from PayPal/eBay to other online shippers such as Stamps.com[90]
In December 2011, PayPal froze funds in an account held by April Winchell, the owner of Regretsy, used for charitable giving, requiring the account holder to refund the donations collected but keeping the fees charged. [91][92]
Please, provide right information when publishing something.

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