Conferences burned by Paypal

TL;DR version : Its another 'Paypal isn't a bank' complaint.

Paypal isn't, they don't have the resources or the tools that banks have, you shouldn't treat them like a bank. Never keep a 'balance' with them, they don't have the same restrictions that banks have and you don't have the same rights that you do with a bank.

In this piece the story is an open source conference and a balance of $127,000 Euros that gets held hostage. Here is a clue, if you're looking at those sized balances and that size conference, get a relationship with a bank. Get a merchant account, etc etc.

Paypal is all about not having any risk. Lots of people no doubt try to abuse it all of the time. They probably assume you are a crook even when all signs point to legitimacy because the 'really good' crooks look legit too.

After reading the horror stories on the site, I can't help but ask if PayPal is trying to push business to the insurance industry?

These horror stories may provide incentives for more "progressive" insurance companies to create exotic insurance instruments covering large ecommerce providers, insuring against the chance that the payment provider will arbitrarily freeze your account when you need it most.

For all the epic fails that we read regarding PayPal's seemingly draconian fraud detection department/algorithms, one wonders what the percentage is versus overall PayPal transaction volume.