HN Explorer

Why don't more people accept paypal?

5 points by piers ↗ HN
I've written here before about the fact I can't use services such as AWS because I only have a maestro (switch) card which isn't reall accepted in the US and dn't have Visa or Mastercard.

So, my question is, why don't more people accept things like PayPal?

8 comments

[ 1871 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] thread
lsc
no idea. I only take paypal, 'cause I don't want to take the time to harden my billing system to the point where I'd trust it with other people's credit cards.

Some people complain about high fees and chargebacks, but I've had a merchant account before, and they have the same problems.

aston
Paypal is more demanding than most payment options about the prominence of their brand. They require, among other things, that you use their BIG, BRIGHT ORANGE Paypal button and that if you offer other payment options, the grouping needs to be "Paypal -or - The Rest," and not an arrangement where they're suggested as inferior (or even equal). They also pretty much require that part of the payments process happen on their own site.

All of that put together means that people serious about handling payments and maintaining their own experience for that process may opt not to go the Paypal route at all.

alain94040
From the US point of view, if you can't even get a Mastercard or Visa, you're not trustworthy.

Here (US), my 2-year old daugther receives credit card offers in the mail. Imagine that.

http://FairSoftware.net: businesses for geeks

akronim
But if you're not in the US it's not straighforward to get a US card, which can be limiting, e.g. you can't use Mechanical Turk without a US card and address.
piers
Exactly my point. My cash is good so why don't more US companies want it?
lsc
yeah, that's the idea. those sorts of people tend to think that any traffic originating outside of the US or EU or JP is fraudulent or criminal in nature.

That hasn't been my experience... I've personally had more trouble with USian spammers who claim the user signed up... and the user disagrees. (I've largely solved the problem by prohibiting bulk mail from my service entirely)

I've had plenty of customers who were intelligent, legitimate and profitable who came from outside of the 'first world'

c1sc0
Is that as a requester or worker? How hard is it to fake that? How hard is it to get a US credit card as a non-resident?
chris11
If you really don't want to use a visa credit card, but the company requires it, you can get a visa gift card online. They can be used anywhere visa debit is accepted. http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/visa_gift_card_or... has a list of online retailers.

Edit: It looks like most of the sites certified by visa require bank accounts with the issuing bank, and it looks like all of the cards are physically shipped to you. You can get a virtual visa card number from a bunch of different websites though. And it looks like they can be use for recurring payments too. Though I've read that some websites check the card for the information on the actual billing address, so acceptance may vary.