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iPhone owners have the distinct pleasure of settling debts via PayPal on their phones, simply by “bumping” their phones together. It’s a pretty darn cool feature and one you should not be jealous of, because its on the way to Android shortly. And by shortly they mean the next 2 or 3 months – at least that’s what they told CNET.
There are two main things I’m wondering:
- Will the app allow you to bump an Android Phone and iPhone for cross-platform payment?
- Why don’t more people have PayPal?
I know that statistically a LOT of people do have PayPal. But recently I’ve wanted to pay some friends back for random events/nights/etc… and when they don’t live nearby I’ve mentioned “I’ll just PayPal you”. Nope, I won’t, because they don’t have an account.
I think us tech obsessors are MUCH more likely to have a PayPal account, even if we’ve only used it once or twice in the past decade. I’m hoping more people sign up because this seems like a ridiculously easy way to settle debts, even if its something as simple as sitting at a restaurant and working out the bill or being at a baseball game or concert and evening out ticket prices and concessions.
But alas, there will always be a group of people who think PayPal and Bump Payments are a HORRIBLE idea. And there is a very specific name for that group… MOOCHERS!
Extra credit for whoever gets what movie this article’s title is a pun about – no need to share the quote – with both hands on the keyboard I don’t have any earmuffs handy.
could you pay with paypal on snapfinger?
Goodfellas
Oooh, ooooh, I know the quote and the movie! I’ll just share the movie…..Goodfellas!!!
There’s plenty of good reasons not to have a PayPal account; the *idea* of what PayPal does is fantastic, and I’d love to see a suitable replacement emerge that isn’t as risky as PP, but the way PP works is just about as consumer-unfriendly as you can possibly get.
I had an account for nearly ten years, but finally closed it late last year because I’d simply stopped using it because of repeated issues with them. You can find plenty of people eager to enumerate their complaints about PP, but it really just boils down to this: it’s not a bank.
If that doesn’t mean anything to you, you’re in trouble :)
Because it’s not a bank, it’s not subject to any kind of regulation. Funds are not protected by any FDIC-style insurance, funds can be (and have been) seized almost arbitrarily (and typically without recourse unless you just sue them) without warning, and their behind-the-scenes practices (where actually moving money via EFT is concerned) can trigger fraud warnings at the institutions where your real bank accounts live.
When an account is frozen, money can come in but not come out. There is no explanation, and little recourse except to jump through each verification hoop presented until the account is unfrozen. In some cases, unfreezing never occurs, and funds are simply seized forever unless a civil court action is filed. Note they do this to just about every account at one point or another — no fraud or goofiness was ever perpetrated from my PP account, yet it ended up being frozen five times. A mistake on their end involving credit/debit card validation even caused my bank at the time to freeze a *checking* account because it saw about twenty $1 debit attempts rapid-fired from PP and thought something fishy was going on.
Add non-competitive credit card rates and other fees charged to “premier” members, and PP just isn’t an attractive proposition. Any money you place in it is at risk, period. It may well just be an inconvenience, but it’s one that’s easily avoided.
Not having a PP account hasn’t harmed me or caused me any inconvenience at all, which is far superior to the inconvenience of having nearly a thousand dollars frozen for two weeks like they did last year :)
The thing that bothers me about PayPal is how they insist on withdrawing money from your bank account. You can never set credit card as primary source for funds.
Goodfellas!!
Ebay requires it for sellers now, so I only expect the number to grow. (There is a guy at my office who has never used Ebay. I was blown away.)
Dropped your Droid from your sweatpants? F*ck you, pay me!
Useless
White Nights?
@William Ferrell
What an customer-misfortune saga this is… :-S I have PP for over 3 years now and never had any problems. It’s fast, it’s handy, I don’t need to carry around any sort of identification devices or enter any sorts of long codes that I can’t memorize. All I need is my email and 1 sophisticated password. And no, you shouldn’t use PP to buy your hi-fi system or your furniture. It’s made for small transactions.
As to all the risks and practices fluff. Please… Pay Pal is not a bank because YOU’R NOT SUPPOSE TO DEPOSIT ANY MONEY WITH THEM!!!. PP acts purely as an online interface between a dealer and your bank account or your credit card. That’s all! 5 bucks in. 5 bucks out.
So I find it a cool idea, will promote it to my friends, most of whom do have PP and would be delighted when the app is out! :)
Dang! @deezle beat me to it!! “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”
MAD MAX
I’m excited about this especially if it’s cross-compatible with iPhone because I usually don’t have cash on me and I always feel bad borrowing cash from friends when we’re out. They know I’m definitely good for the money, but maybe it’s someone I don’t see very often or there’s always the possibility we’ll forget. It would be awesome if I could just pay them on the spot. Unfortunately, Paypal fees are pretty steep and for this sort of situation, it’s basically like an ATM fee.
@William Ferrell
Right on. I was also disappointed with how slow PayPal’s process of transferring funds was when PayPal worked perfectly (without the issues you mentioned). To transfer funds from one PayPal member to another PayPal member like the article describes, took 5 business days in my experience for the money to actually be in the destination account. My original impetus for using PayPal was that it would be faster than mailing a check. Wrong. Mailing a check from the Midwest to NYC was actually faster, including the time it took for physically moving check to the bank, standing in line for a teller and allowing for hold-time policies. Pathetic in this day and age of supposedly instant electronic transactions. To add insult to injury, PayPal will deduct a fee to transfer. So, a buddy paying you back $50 will actually yield a $40-something deposit in your bank account or your buddy jumping thru hoops to account for PayPal’s fees.
For what the author described, PayPal is the wrong answer.
Paypal is the easiest way for me to transfer money from my bank in the US to my bank in Sweden. It worked out very well.
I’d not use PayPal again after their ridiculous treatment of the not-for-profit site Cryptome:
http://cryptome.org/0001/cryptome-sar.htm
Paypal sucks, simple as that. I don’t know a single person in Switzerland who uses Paypal. Not a single one. I looked into it but fees are too high and there’s no real use for it. So, I repeat: Paypal sucks. No thanks, bye.
I am very happy with Paypal. It is great for sending money to my son in college. If you select personal for payment type, there are no fees. I haven’t noticed any delay in getting access to funds. Of course, you don’t want to leave a lot of money in the account, just enough to handle small purchases, ebay balance etc. Also, whenever I call the customer service number, I get a real live human being who is actually willing and able to answer my questions. Amazing.
I played around with InstantPay, http://mobya.com/instantpay it has some PayPal integration.
Had fun sending professional invoices to friends =)
I don’t like paypal, never did and never will. I avoid any business that uses it.
I don’t like the their system of having to go through some middleman. No, thank you. I you need to borrow a couple bucks…I’ll just walk to the ATM machine.
As much as I hate checks, and will welcome their eventual final demise in the US.. I would rather get a 3rd party check, than deal with Paypal.. I gave it a try, but the failure/problem rate was unacceptable.. US banks are rumored to be heading this way anyway, I’ll just wait.
We need a better PayPal app, like the iPhone one.
Wow, I’ve never heard a complaint about paypal before. It’s always worked perfectly for me and thought everyone loved it (aside from that 2-3% fee). Maybe because I’m not moving money to offshore tax shelters or because I have good karma?
bump me pay me hack me rob me kill me
I have had a PayPal account for going on 10 years now and it has generally been convenient and useful. I don’t remember any glitches serious enough to, well, form a bad memory. And it has helped me out of a couple of bad deals on eBay. And when I made an international purchase on eBay that the seller requested a bank transfer for payment, they accepted a PayPal payment instead which saved me a ludicrous bank fee.
I actually agree with William Ferrell on his issues with Paypal. The clear need for a credible alternative is definitely warranted. I think the best purpose for paypal is just for one time payment’s to credible vendors. However, I don’t even use Paypal for paying Amazon. If I could completely do without it, I’d be a lot happier.
I think this another Android app that I’ll pass on. As soon as a good credible & improved alternative to Paypal becomes available, I’d close my account in a heartbeat.
Business bad? Bump you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Bump you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Bump you, pay me.
I like Paypal. As a merchant, it serves it’s purpose for me very well. For the past 3 years, I have received an average of around 400 payments per month through them, ranging from $10 to $1000. No real issues with them. Transfers to my bank are usually in my account within 2 business days, even though it says that it can take 3 to 5 days to complete. Sorry guys, I just haven’t had any problems with them.
I have added AlertPay, Google Checkout, and Boku as alternative payment methods for those who don’t have Paypal, or for those who have jumped on the “I HATE PAYPAL” bandwagon. Possibly 2 or 3 percent of the payments I receive have shifted over to these.
So, it seems to me that Paypal is doing fine by the majority.
Paypal is the devil … and ebay is hell. Another giant scam fueled by a mass a followers that contribute to their necessary existence.
I hate when companies get this big …hike up fees, leave you at their mercy and have you talk to outsourced customer service in other countries who are instructed to just keep stating “This is not our policy”. And we accept that because that is the only answer you will ever get.
I really wish people would revolt.
Can’t there be one company out there to come up with a better solution that really works? and doesn’t rob people with ridiculous fees. I hate monopolies.