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posted by janrinok on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the hand-it-over dept.

PayPal has been annoying some of its customers for years.

Instead of making it easy for folks to pay online using their credit cards, the digital payments company directs them to buy stuff with their PayPal balances and checking accounts. The end result has been both profitable for PayPal (because it avoids credit card networks' higher fees) and a pain for shoppers looking to rack up points or frequent flyer miles.

PayPal is finally changing that, thanks to new deals with Visa and Mastercard it signed earlier this year. On Thursday, PayPal took the chance to tout those agreements, saying its US customers will be able set a default way to pay -- whether credit card, debit card or bank account -- starting this month. The change will be implemented globally beginning early next year.

"We want to make it easy for anyone to pay however they want, wherever they want," Joanna Lambert, a PayPal executive focused on consumer products, said in an interview.

This change is another way PayPal is hoping to make its app and website far more intimate pieces of people's financial lives. Right now, PayPal is something its average customer uses only twice a month; it wants that to increase to twice a week. The Visa and Mastercard agreements could help do that by encouraging more people to use PayPal more often and inviting back many customers who were turned off by its current system.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by ShadowSystems on Saturday September 17 2016, @11:16PM

    by ShadowSystems (6185) <ShadowSystemsNO@SPAMGmail.com> on Saturday September 17 2016, @11:16PM (#403242)

    My mom said she needed a PayPal account for making many of her purchases online.
    I "forced" her to get a Walmart "GreenDot" refillable credit card & use that as the financial source that PayPal would drain funds from in order to make said purchases.
    It didn't matter how many times I patiently tried to explain WHY that I had insisted on this (and other) measures, right up until the first time (of many) that PayPal screwed up & drained the card to a zero balance.
    Then it made PERFECT sense to her as she realized that if it had been her *bank account* that had been screwed over, she'd be out a month's pay AND all the overdraft charged to the account by her bank for the sudden lack of funds.
    Now she keeps a trivial balance in the card, just enough to cover the purchases she intends to make plus a bit more, essentially "topping up" the card just before making the purchase.
    If PayPal tries to fuck her over again, she's only out the cash in the card rather than her entire Bank Account balance, AND since it's a Visa branded card she's got the protections of the brand as well.
    Given all the times PayPal has fucked up & drained the card, she sighs, shrugs, & notifies the card issuer to challenge the charge...
    I think she may have the number memorized at this point, else she's got it on speed dial.
    I'd rather she doesn't use PayPal at all, but at least she's insulated from trajedy when (not if) PayPal fucks up yet again.
    =-\

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