> The reason this policy exists is likely to remove super old liabilities for long-dormant accounts that have been long forgotten about.
That’s exactly what this is. I don’t believe it’s meant to be a money grab towards existing customers (simply because it’s such a bad one). Everything has a lifetime. PayPal by now is full of accounts from dead people, money nobody is ever going to reclaim (even if someone out there has a better claim to it).
This money has to go somewhere, otherwise it’s very literally dormant. In my country (Belgium), the government has tools to let people find and reclaim money they may be owed that is sitting in bank accounts. But something like PayPal is not really able to do this.
With dormant fees, PayPal is able to create a lifetime on accounts with dormant money… they will eventually zero out.
That said, they’re still scum and nobody should use PayPal, ever, for anything. I work in fintech - if you’re using PayPal and need recommendations to replace it, reply with your use case and I’ll respond.
> In my country (Belgium), the government has tools to let people find and reclaim money they may be owed that is sitting in bank accounts. But something like PayPal is not really able to do this.
In the US, there's also a system of unclaimed property, administered by each state. States hold onto such property, and at least the few states I've lived in allow you to search online for it, and provide a means to have it sent to you on request. I've found a couple hundred dollars over the past 20 years, mostly cases where I've overpaid some sort of account, and then the account was closed, though I recall one case where Google had been the one to submit some unclaimed property to the state in my name (never found out what it was from).
PayPal could certainly set an inactivity limit -- say 5 years -- and then turn the funds over to the state listed in the account's user information. But they'd rather keep the money, and slowly siphon it off. I agree that this is a pretty bad money grab, but there's absolutely another option that would allow a PayPal user to reclaim that money later on.
> That said, they’re still scum and nobody should use PayPal, ever, for anything. I work in fintech - if you’re using PayPal and need recommendations to replace it, reply with your use case and I’ll respond.
....I'd imagine most of that would be "paying for stuff that has paypal as only payment method", or otherwise alternative being putting your CC information on the site you will use once and never again, and hoping that they have better security than paypal.
And the rest being "well I want to give my user easy way to pay for stuff and paypal is just that"
> if you’re using PayPal and need recommendations to replace it, reply with your use case and I’ll respond
I'm accepting donations for my open source software project (FreeSewing.org). I also need the shipping address because I send a little thank-you. What should I use instead that's available to people from different countries?
Have you checked out opencollective.com? Since you’re in Belgium your project is likely eligible for Open Source Collective Europe. They offer users a lot of different payment methods including card and even crypto since recently if you want to do that. They do have options to ask for a shipping address.
What country are you in? How do you fund your PayPal account?
If you don’t want a credit card because you don’t want debt, what you likely want is a debit card. Most banks issue it for free.
If you are in the UK, make sure to tell your bank to set your overdraft to zero.
If you are in the US, keep in mind that you are not building credit by choosing to never use a credit card (and yes I think it is stupid as well). I know there are zero-fee credit cards that can act as debit cards, I can find some recommendation if you like.
In the US, Privacy.com is also a cool issuer of virtual cards which may have features you are interested in.
If for some reason you don’t want a debit card either because you hate physical cards or something, know that Google Pay and Apple Pay also issue virtual cards on your behalf, and in some countries don’t need a card as payment method.
Why don't you want a credit card? They offer a lot of consumer protection and a lot of rewards, and if you use them responsibly, there's zero downside.
Reasonable, but that means you're not only leaving money on the table (in the form of credit card rewards or cash back), but also you're not taking advantage of a great benefit: credit cards give you a firewall between merchants and your actual money.
If a merchant fraudulently -- or even accidentally -- debits your bank account, then that money is gone. In many cases you will be able to get it back, but how long will that take? Days? Weeks? More? If the bad transaction is large enough, maybe you won't make your rent/mortgage payment that month. But with a credit card, the money is still in your bank account, and you can dispute the charge, and have it removed before you've spent your own money on it.
Yes, credit cards do require some discipline. I pay mine off every month, and incur no interest charges, but sure, there's the possibility that I could charge enough in a month such that I wouldn't have the cash in my checking account to cover it at the end of the month. I generally don't consider this an issue, though, as I don't have a compulsive spending problem, and I track my purchases well enough in any case.
In this day and age of incredibly poor customer service, I think it's invaluable to have some intermediary fronting the money for my purchases, in a way that lets me dispute transactions I think are in error before having to spend my own money on them.
This sounds more like you need better consumer protection that is government backed and written into law. You shouldn't have to have possible debt just to get that.
Burglary and getting ripped off by a company are two different sorts of things with different solutions.
Locks work because it stops a lot of opportunity crime. Simple and effective: For everything else, we have laws.
With consumer protection, what the 'get a credit card' crowd are basically saying is that sure, locks are available, but you have to be good enough to get one. Sorry about your luck, poor people that can't get one. Consumer protection laws are basically locks for everyone.
My point was that companies break the law a lot, and it usually takes a long time for those wrongs to be righted. By using a credit card, you avoid the harm in the meantime.
And nobody is denied a credit card just for being poor. What keeps you from getting a credit card is if you're poor but spend like you're rich, and so end up delinquent on a bunch of debt that bank gets stuck with.
I've had a credit card for over 10 years and get roughly 3% back on average which comes out to thousands of dollars each year. Never once have I paid any interest or fees. It has helped build my credit which is a big part I have over a 800 credit score. The money automatically is paid each month out of my bank account, I don't have to manually do anything
> The US is the only country in the world where you have such a credit history system built with credit cards.
Aside from the links posted in a sibling comment, I wouldn't say the U.S. credit system is built with credit cards: it's a fairly holistic metric that takes into account rent payments, loans, and a bunch of other stuff like "bankruptcies, foreclosures, lawsuits, wage garnishments or attachments, liens, or public judgments against you"[0]. Credit cards are lines of credit, so they certainly factor in, but the focus on your overall credit health, of which your credit cards may be a small part.
Use a debit card instead? You can only spend as much money as you have on the bank account. Except for the gas station, they can put a hold on your card for roughly the amount of a full tank and then release it after they know how much you refueled for. This can create a debt but is limited in scope.
Slight niggle, anyone can preauth for presumably a full amount and adjust the charge or cancel it (it's instant via the card networks, like refunds, your bank is lying to you if they say things like 5 working days etc)
If you pay their entire balance in full every month, which is what I meant by using them responsibly, then you are spending money you actually have, and you're also not paying any interest.
That’s exactly what this is. I don’t believe it’s meant to be a money grab towards existing customers (simply because it’s such a bad one). Everything has a lifetime. PayPal by now is full of accounts from dead people, money nobody is ever going to reclaim (even if someone out there has a better claim to it).
This money has to go somewhere, otherwise it’s very literally dormant. In my country (Belgium), the government has tools to let people find and reclaim money they may be owed that is sitting in bank accounts. But something like PayPal is not really able to do this.
With dormant fees, PayPal is able to create a lifetime on accounts with dormant money… they will eventually zero out.
That said, they’re still scum and nobody should use PayPal, ever, for anything. I work in fintech - if you’re using PayPal and need recommendations to replace it, reply with your use case and I’ll respond.