General > General Technical Chat
Paypal policy update
<< < (5/13) > >>
Nominal Animal:
I so wish a billionaire would set up a nonprofit to handle online transactions without political bias or excess tariffs.  Obviously not "for free", but at rates that make it long-term maintainable, but without the pressure to make oodles of money to stockholders.  (You don't need to necessarily invest a lot of money in it, but you do need a billionaire or a big banker (which nowadays are the same thing) to get the necessary banking contacts to make it work.)

I'm using a Let's Encrypt certificate on my website, provided by the non-profit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), except that my hosting provider handled all the details for me.  My own computers run Linux, funded by both non-profits and companies alike (especially by employing long-term developers).  This model is very far from perfect, but it works better than the gigacompany model Apple, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, PayPal, etc. are implementing.

I don't necessarily want someone do provide the same services for a lesser cut, but I want my payment processor to keep the heck away from any politics, and just do their job, without constantly worrying what their current value-extraction approach is.  PayPal is already using their position to enforce their political stance, which to me is like Microsoft Word refusing to print a document because Microsoft thinks it contains right-wing hate-speech.  Plus, their currency conversion rates are rather extreme.

Seems to me a very limited charter nonprofit (that pays its employees well, but otherwise is not pressured to extract more and more value from their customers), would fit the position of a payment processor best.  It is, after all, just a middleman between customers and commercial banks in different countries.

Come to think about it, that could also solve the interbank transaction issues (IBAN etc.) countries worldwide are dealing with right now, what with the attemps to introduce politically-based policy in the mix.
bd139:
BACS / FP here do that. No fees. Bank to bank. Instant.

User interface sucks. That’s the only problem.
magic:

--- Quote from: soldar on April 05, 2019, 09:21:44 pm ---When they finally returned my money two or three months later I cancelled the account.

--- End quote ---
Similar story here, but I never bothered to unlock the account because they were obliged to return my funds within 6 months by law. It still even exists, I can't close it without unlocking even though there is no money on it. All mail about new rules goes straight to spam ;)


--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on April 06, 2019, 08:15:21 am ---nonprofit
without political bias
--- End quote ---
Even allowing anyone to use the service for any purpose would be considered "political bias" these days because it reinforces existing power structures over the march of progress :blah:
The West is literally becoming "you are against the Nazis or you are with them". And perhaps for a reason too - ideas which ten years ago were confined to irrelevant blogs and obscure Internet forums are making it into comment sections of major websites and campaign speeches of (certain ;)) presidents.


--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on April 06, 2019, 08:15:21 am ---My own computers run Linux, funded by both non-profits and companies alike (especially by employing long-term developers).  This model is very far from perfect, but it works better than the gigacompany model Apple, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, PayPal, etc. are implementing.
--- End quote ---
Hard to argue against your comparison with Microsoft these days ;)
As for Linux, the corporate involvement sorta works because many of these companies are actually Linux users too or Linux system vendors so they care about keeping it usable. But there are others, like vendors contributing to Linux in order to sell their product, who churn out minimum effort crap, solutions too focused on their narrow area of interest, binary drivers, or somewhat user-hostile solutions which happen to be convenient for hardware vendors.

So, fundamentally, I'm afraid there is no escape from the old rule: do it yourself or pay somebody to do it like you want it done.
If you are lucky, you may find others with similar needs (like in open source software) or vote with your wallet.

Which brings us to an online payment solution which I actually like and vote for myself, and that's bank transfers.

It may sound unimaginable to some folks, but in most of Europe you cannot simply withdraw money from somebody else's account knowing only the account number. Yes, this implies that checks are virtually nonexistent here and so is check fraud. Oh horror ;)

So plain old wire transfers to a publicly known account number were the preferred method of payments like 10 years ago and still are used widely. Nowadays, banks also introduced "instant transfers" to business accounts within the same bank with the extra convenience that the business can submit payment details to the bank's system behind the scenes and the buyer only logs in to online banking and confirms. Furthermore, a number of payment processors appeared who offload dealing with all the different consumer banks from the merchant. There is no buyer protection or refunds, but these can be provided by auction sites.

So that's how it works on our local eBay clone and on AliExpress. It's fast, takes little clicking on the buyer's side and is inherently safe because at no point is any external party able to drain my account. If eBay manages to integrate it into their system, I may start using them. But with PP and CC, no way.
NorthGuy:

--- Quote from: magic on April 06, 2019, 03:33:34 pm ---Which brings us to an online payment solution which I actually like and vote for myself, and that's bank transfers.

--- End quote ---

Here people get cashback and points from their credit card purchases. Even though bank transfers are better, people won't give up credit cards easily.
NorthGuy:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on April 06, 2019, 08:15:21 am ---I so wish a billionaire would set up a nonprofit to handle online transactions without political bias or excess tariffs.
--- End quote ---

What a non-sense. There are lots of independent payment processors already. They're all different and they all compete with each other keeping the fees low. Just select the one you like.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod