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The PayPal Problem
9 years ago
General
PayPal is a problem for artists, and not just because it makes life hard for artists with its draconian policies. I'm going to propose to you that it's not PayPal's policies that are at fault, it's their overall business model. PayPal alternatives like Serve or Google Wallet would be just as big a problem—and in fact, the introduction of PayPal alternatives would make the situation even worse.
If you use PayPal to handle your payment processing, you are requiring all of your clients to exist in a very specific payment ecosystem. They have to abide by PayPal's rules and policies in order to pay you, because PayPal is the only way to pay PayPal—you can't use, say, Serve to pay a PayPal user unless you get a PayPal account and attach your Serve card. To make matters worse, your clients will then go out from you and encourage other artists also to use PayPal because it's just simpler to do so.
Over time, we all get trapped in PayPal's ecosystem, and when PayPal decides it's time to fuck us, we can't do a whole lot about it.
I've switched to Square because it completely eliminates the constraint of payment. Whatever bank you use, I can accept your card. If you don't like your bank, and you decide to switch banks, I will still be able to accept your card. My payment processor does not lock my clients in to policies that they may not support. Neither does it lock me into such policies; if I want to, I can switch to another payment processor, like Quickbooks or Due or vCita, or even just pay for a merchant account and manually do my own invoicing. And if I do that, my clients won't have to do anything different; they'll just enter their card information and be done.
PayPal is bad for our community because they basically own our community. They get to tell us how we do business, which is not cool.
If you would like more information on how to use Square to sell your art, please feel free to send me a note and I'll get you all the info you need. It's simple, powerful, and safe. And you'll get a free card reader so you can sell art at conventions quick and easy, too! :}
This journal not paid for by Square or its affiliates I just sweet jesus cupcake fucking christ do I hate me some PayPal
If you use PayPal to handle your payment processing, you are requiring all of your clients to exist in a very specific payment ecosystem. They have to abide by PayPal's rules and policies in order to pay you, because PayPal is the only way to pay PayPal—you can't use, say, Serve to pay a PayPal user unless you get a PayPal account and attach your Serve card. To make matters worse, your clients will then go out from you and encourage other artists also to use PayPal because it's just simpler to do so.
Over time, we all get trapped in PayPal's ecosystem, and when PayPal decides it's time to fuck us, we can't do a whole lot about it.
I've switched to Square because it completely eliminates the constraint of payment. Whatever bank you use, I can accept your card. If you don't like your bank, and you decide to switch banks, I will still be able to accept your card. My payment processor does not lock my clients in to policies that they may not support. Neither does it lock me into such policies; if I want to, I can switch to another payment processor, like Quickbooks or Due or vCita, or even just pay for a merchant account and manually do my own invoicing. And if I do that, my clients won't have to do anything different; they'll just enter their card information and be done.
PayPal is bad for our community because they basically own our community. They get to tell us how we do business, which is not cool.
If you would like more information on how to use Square to sell your art, please feel free to send me a note and I'll get you all the info you need. It's simple, powerful, and safe. And you'll get a free card reader so you can sell art at conventions quick and easy, too! :}
This journal not paid for by Square or its affiliates I just sweet jesus cupcake fucking christ do I hate me some PayPal
Can you explain to me what the difference between Square and Paypal is?
At least in the US, "obscenity" for the sake of censorship should be limited to material that has no artistic value beyond the prurient interest; as a result, hand-drawn artwork almost universally falls outside the purview of obscenity for the sake of legal purposes, and most major companies don't bother with it. PayPal, however, regularly interprets their terms of service in a very draconian way that has been known to get artists shut down.
In other words, most of the Terms of Service you see from a service are just boilerplate that translates to "we can do whatever we want with your service for basically any reason"; what's important is less the terms themselves and more how the company uses those terms in relation to their customer. It is in this regard that PayPal is so infuriating for artists.
These days that's not the case. Square is just one example of a service that does payment processing without a monthly fee, and there are plenty of services for a reasonable monthly fee that offer a lot more than just a basic merchant account. PayPal isn't the only option; we just need to start actually using those options.
Square charges a 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction fee, which is I believe exactly the same as PayPal's fees (which you should be paying unless you're lying to PayPal about how you're using it). Each time you deposit your Square balance into your bank account, the fees are taken from the deposit.
PayPal is an evil, horrible company and despite everyone seeming to know this, there's been so much resistance to change. It's gotten much better in the past two years, but there's still a lot of education that needs to be done in the community with regards to their alternative options. So, again, thank you. <3
Paypal is a business, and they take measures protect their business. Unfortunately the nature of those measures does not often favor our community or its business models and methods. I call their policies draconian, but that is perhaps an inflammatory choice of words (if accurate nonetheless).