Re:PayPal Starts Banning VPN and SmartDNS Services
by mikeash on Saturday February 06, 2016 @04:04PM
(#11049848)
PayPal could at least offer the option for purchases funded entirely from existing funds in the buyer's account. That they don't suggests that protecting buyers is more valuable to them than protecting sellers.
Re:PayPal Starts Banning VPN and SmartDNS Services
by andybak on Saturday February 06, 2016 @07:21PM
(#11050811)
Isn't that whata debit card does
Re:PayPal Starts Banning VPN and SmartDNS Services
by mikeash on Saturday February 06, 2016 @10:01PM
(#11051360)
Debit transactions have the same sort of protections.
The main difference between debit and credit is that if you're the victim of fraud with a debit card, money has been taken from your bank account and you have to fight to get it back. The fight is usually not very hard, but it takes some time. If it hits at the wrong moment you may have trouble buying food or paying rent on time, even though you'll get the money back before too long.
It's a consequence of the regulations on credit cards. The cardholder can reverse allegedly-fraudulent transactions. Paypal can't reasonably do something else while processing credit cards, so they don't.
It's quite stupid because you end up with customers who aren't even looking for credit, they're willing to prepay and are willing to trust the seller, they just want to transfer funds digitally. But they can't because the seller/card processor doesn't trust the buyer not to reverse the transaction and the regulations don't allow the buyer to abandon that right up front.