> To PayPal's credit, this was their first rate increase in a very long time if not forever.

There is no reason to assume that rates should go up at all, it's not like the % you take needs to be corrected for inflation.

The opposite in fact. All costs should decline over time.

When you fail to attract new customers but your shareholders continue to expect their holding's value to increase, a price increase will temporarily show gains on your balance sheet. The downside is that you've also provided additional impetuous for your customers to consider alternatives.

Yeah I definitely missed it and it caught me by total surprise today. I imagine many are in the same boat.

This also comes after they've adjusted their policy so that they keep all fees even after a payment has been refunded. They're getting less and less attractive every month.

Keeping the fees on refunds bugs me so much as well and is completely out of line. Sadly everyone seems to do this now.

We haven't gone live with it yet, but following this change I actually went comparison shopping a little. I'm planning on swapping my payment processing over to Braintree.. which is still paypal.. but actually does have less fees. It has the benefit of still being able to accept paypal payments (at the paypal fee rate) but lower fees for credit card transactions.

The last time I went comparison shopping I figured Wirecard was a good deal. I even got a quote from them and planned to switch to them. But I was a lazy procrastinator, so I did nothing for a couple of months, and then all of the sudden I read about them on the news...

"Upcoming changes to your account" - What anti-pattern hogwash.

"Upcoming changes to our fee structure"

Is this in anyway related to EBay cutting them out and passing their savings to themselves?

I blame the increased cost of compliance.

And also the fact that they are one of the few established and widely accepted payment / transfer systems, so their customers aren't going to flee in droves.

I'm not sure if you can blame compliance for that. PayPal is back since a very very long time already...

And its getting bigger and bigger by the day, so it should scale. Not increase cost..

I'm pretty sure they do it:

A) for the stock

B) because they are a monopol (almost)

C) Or they're seeing more transactions that maybe be fraudulent, or not. And their users (sellers, and perhaps to some extent buyers) are asking such transactions be allowed. The increase is to cover the increase in risk.

Note: Not defending the increase. Only pointing out there's a possible upside for their market. Yes, at a slightly higher price.

Monopoly in what? I've never used paypall in any physical or online payment.

It's the prisoner's dilemma. Merchants using PayPal can't charge more on PayPal transactions so they increase the price of all their items for all customers. For card transactions they pocket the extra profit and likely then use it to pay PayPal fees and refunds. A similar mechanism happens for credit card chargebacks.

All customers pay for this feature.

When given the choice between credit card or PayPal, customers can get PayPal protection or not for the same price. If they use PayPal they perpetuate the story that people prefer PayPal and contribute to generally higher prices to account for PayPal refunds, mostly damaging themselves in the long run (given we already have laws in place that force merchants to refund / return items and most merchants are not scammers) and benefitting PayPal.

It seems like we need a law that requires a credit card processing fee to be shown on the receipt like sales tax. People would then start gravitating to the cheapest processors due to competition being obvious to consumers.

Or it could be just simple profit and the second thing you mentioned.

There's a narrative where companies are painted as regretfully rather than opportunistically raising prices, maybe they just want to make more money. That's kinda the point of the system after all

I blame all the sellers using PayPal's services but not wanting to pay the fees. <RANT>I pay a 3% fee to purchase with my debit card, so sellers need to pay up as well. I'm sick of sellers wanting me to use F&F or cover their PayPal fees. If you have a business that accepts payment through PayPal, or any other payment service, pay the fees!</RANT>