I'm relieved when I see a company found another way and doesn't make me use PayPal when paying.
For vendor it makes sense to exercise caution: not leaving large balance on PayPal account, attach only intermediary bank account to PayPal to prevent PayPal tapping into your funds at will and have reserved accept payment method in case PayPal gets awry on you
Cutting down ~8% thats after paypal fees is not fun. I switched.
With that said, there are people out there who have, for whatever reason, vowed to never use PP. Maybe they had a bad experience. Most people who want a PP alternative seem satisfied to send me a money order. If my business were to grow beyond $15k/y, I would think about adding a secondary payment service.
On my end, PP is my accounting system. I use the PP credit card to pay for all of my supplies. At tax time, I download a huge spreadsheet of every transaction, and mung it into my year-end numbers.
Dealing with chargebacks, frauds, and disputes... my view is that the idea of being able to get a refund, no questions asked, has been established as a consumer expectation by the large physical and online retailers such as Home Depot and Target. Those companies can afford to "eat" a few bad transactions. It's harder for the rest of us. If someone has very low sales volume, or is moving big ticket items, a single chargeback or dispute can be painful. Anybody who's thinking of setting up shop online, should think about how they can maintain a cash cushion to absorb the issues that can arise. Eating a few bad deals has to be just part of your budget.
That being said, from a consumer perspective chargebacks are easier to obtain than paypal disputes, if the transaction is small. For a lot of small dollar amount chargebacks merchants don’t even bother.
Very easy to deal with fraudulent vendors and discourage shady business practices.
That said merchants definitely hate that because it’s lose-lose for them even if they win (mandatory $25-$40 fee they pay regardless)
But my point is that merchants should love PayPal for this, and consumers don’t realize it’s chargebacks that are > PayPal claims when it comes to consumer friendliness.
Though even paypal claims are easily won by consumers if you’re willing to commit light fraud/perjury.
Consumer can of course re-retaliate back to merchant via social media hell.
So, on a final note, it's better to try to resolve things in a friendly manner, unless there is a clear fraud on one side.
Social media hell is only really effective if you are notable. Otherwise the most damage you really do is simply not being a net promoter.
Resolving in a friendly manner and designing the user experience around easy customer service should be the standard. Anything less and really the merchant is committing fraud.
The reasons why I hate credit cards both as a consumer and a merchant are:
1) legacy tech that improves at a snail’s pace. They literally profit off of fraud, because fraud liability generally falls on merchants but they make money off of increased transactions (due to less friction).
2) they stopped innovating and a clear sign of that is the heavy push towards loyalty points in order to retain users. Not to mention anticompetitive practices barring merchants on passing on credit card fees (for which they have a 6+ billion dollar class action over).
3) opaque processes over disputes and chargebacks and long 45+ day feedback times
4) they helped cause financial crisis by overextending credit
Payoneer the strongest paypal alternative is currently behaving like PayPal. It closes accounts on a whim without recourse and support is Google-like.
Personally, I stopped using their service due to not enough of a value-add compared to my main bank (Sbanken) and Revolut's questionable HR practices. [2]
Which country are you in?
[1] https://shifter.no/bankfenomenet-revolut-sliter-i-kampen-mot...
[2] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/revolut-trade-unions-labour-...
I love the service unfortunately i've read some very bad articles about their ethics/company culture and that their investlrs are russian gansters. But who knows.
"Revolut is currently only available to residents of the European Economic Area. We're expanding globally very soon!"
A quote from their signup page:
"I am a US resident and I agree to the terms and both the card and ACH authorizations."
Services asking for a credit card number directly on the site may or may not be using Sprite, or a similar legitimate service, and may or may not contain malicious code that captures your input regardless. I really have no way of knowing.
I avoid negative option billing like the plague. There are too many companies who force you to do something ridiculous to cancel it, like calling a "customer retention specialist" between the hours of 10 and 4 and being put on hold for 20 minutes. If I have to subscribe, I want to know that I can turn the money spigot off easily and online.
When I buy a product from a company I am not familiar with, I look for the PayPal button. This is especially true if the product is some type of subscription. There is no way I am buying a subscription to something other than through PayPal.
As a buyer, I know PayPal has my back, and that I can see and easily cancel any subscription.
So, if you go with the alternatives, be aware there are likely millions of consumers like me who you are missing out on from the start.