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Because fraud protection costs money, and it's useful to have an electronic payments medium that doesn't have it, and therefore avoids those costs.

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So if Paypal can give it to me for free, per the article, the answer just seems to be "we should tell everybody as loudly that we can that this is a shit product."

PayPal takes 2.9% and change off the top. Banks do not charge for person to person transfers. There is no skim for expensive fraud prevention to come out of.

PayPal doesn't take that off the top for person-to-person. They haven't in... five years? I don't know. It's been a while. You used to have to do some sort of "it's a gift" thing, but I haven't seen that in a long time.

https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/What-are-the-fees...

> There are no fees within the U.S. to send money to family and friends when you use only your PayPal balance or bank account, or a combination of your PayPal balance and bank account.

Paypal doesn't provide fraud protection for free friends-and-family payments.

There is scam where sellers will request select friends-and-family payments both to avoid the fee but also to avoid the protections.

I think that's why they call it "friends and family"; to keep the expectations reasonable.

Ah, thanks, that's not obvious from the original article. Or from Paypal, either, to me. Very obnoxious, that.

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