GitHub Sponsors will stop supporting PayPal
github.blog
github.blog
I bet a lot of sponsorship dollars will be lost when people do not update.
I wonder if this will effect non-US donors especially. In general, I'm pretty sure paypal is accessible to more people than visa/mastercard. Over the summer they announced some international expansion to who can receive sponsorship dollars. https://github.blog/2022-07-28-github-sponsors-available-in-...
The fraud liability situation is the same for credit and debit cards (i.e. the merchant is not liable for lost/stolen fraud) as long as the terminal has a chip reader.
It's fairly common for cheaper gas station networks like ARCO to only accept debit cards because of the fixed fees.
Not sure why else "debit cards" would suddenly have CVV codes and such.
"Overdraft and NSF fees cost Americans an estimated $15.5 billion in 2019"
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/comparing-over...
If not, can't you walk into a grocery store and buy a $500 prepaid visa card?
I have never seen a grocery store sell something like that here, but maybe that is because I just never paid attention to that.
Not that I am saying it is super hard to get a credit/debit card, but it sure is one hell of a barrier to throwing money at open source contributers here and there.
[0]https://dutchreview.com/news/mastercard-to-stop-issuing-maes...
But is there anyone who has had a good experience, either as a merchant, or as a customer?
I also like that both PayPal and Apple provide a centralized UI where I can revoke payment authorization for subscriptions, so I don’t have to argue with someone on the phone to cancel. My understanding is that Apple subscriptions incur a 30% fee for the developer (and often a price hike for me), so it’s nice that PayPal offers something similar without that fee.
Unfortunately not everyone accepts IBAN, and I don't have a credit/debit card at the moment (they're not common here), so PayPal provides an okay solution for now. I pay my Linode VPS with it for example, because that's essentially the only option I have at the moment.
The 30% fees is on App Store purchases
That's only a thing for Apple in-app subscribtions though, not for Apple Pay, right?
Supposedly there is a new management UI for recurring payments at supported merchants/PSPs, but I haven't encountered it in the wild yet:
No complaints.
Much better support than eBay or Amazon, at least for merchants, and the few times I've needed them as a customer they've helped me out. Even one time when I was socially engineered into ticking the "item received" when I hadn't received the item, they helped me get a refund.
I think a lot of the bad stories you hear about them come from people upset at the customer being always given the benefit of the doubt, even in suspicious fraud situations (e.g. where the customer has 3 positive feedback and the seller has 10,000). It's bullshit, but from a business perspective it's a small price to pay so that your customers don't think "am I about to get scammed?" every time they click the Buy It Now button.
If you drill down a bit too, you'll find a sizable minority of people who lost their shit at support staff then act surprised when they don't get any help.
How?
I've never heard a business prefer PayPal over CCs but maybe there are some.
100Bn of TPV flows through Paypal every month, why do you think all those people trust their money with Paypal?
The company was great to work with until it wasn't.
Most people, most of the time, will have no major issue (and few minor ones) and wonder what the hubbub is about; a minority of people, a minority of time, will have lots of minor issues and a few major ones, and some of them will be _devastated_ by the experience.
All of this is to say: You will find lots of folks who've loved PP and had zero issues, but when the company is that size, a 0.001% error rate screws over a lot of paying customers.
Makes it super easy when you get a new card or a card expires to simply change the card in PayPal without having to go through and change the card everywhere you used it.
I know PayPal gets a bunch of hate for some of their business practices, but I think most of that comes down to them being in the financial services industry which is the most regulated industry to operate your business in. This is the reason why you don't see much competition when it comes to payment processing.
That said, I would never trust them as a business owner. They are too happy to freeze funds and then never release them.
If I was sponsoring someone this change would put end to that. I don't want to give my credit card details to Github.
As a regular user, I can't think of anything that would've annoyed me, beyond sending official emails that look like phishing emails, and then support not even being able to always distinguish whether it's a valid email or not.
Other than that, I've added a credit card, can press the pay with paypal button, login and pay for my goods. Nothing to complain in this loop really, so I'm curious what your perspective is.
I like that I have it set up to pull directly from my bank account (instead of going on a credit card bill to pay, possibly with interest), and that I just have to log in to paypal to make a purchase, and not enter any other numbers, or share my credit card number on an additional form/system that might get hacked.
If a vendor offers paypal as a payment method, I almost always choose it.
I have no particular loyalty to paypal, if another similar option were available I'd be happy to use it, paypal has just gotten such market penetration as non-visa/mastercard payment method. Nobody offers a "pay with venmo" checkout option.
Apple Pay is getting there as well.
Has there been recent drama with PayPal?
Not heard of anything directly involving GitHub but PayPal have created a huge amount of drama around updates to their terms of service: https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/10/paypal_fine_disinform....
Typically, $1/m = $0.46 for the org.
Open Collective doesn't charge fees to hosts that don't charge fees either [1], and most collectives can "self-host" themselves.
It's a great recurring payment option that we're using for our local hackerspace [1]. Though I think their checkout process could probably work better with a bit less friction.
And to stay on topic, we always prefer GitHub Sponsors over Open Collective, since they absorb payment processing fees. :)
I've been using it since 2006. A few years ago I bought something in a browergame and they scammed me. I created a case and they replied with "where is my proof".
Account deleted, there's my proof. They will never see a single cent from me.
paypal sucks but it's kind of convenience.
Good riddance.
It directly presented me with the info that if I were to couple the account, Paypal will have 90 days of access to my balance and all my transactions. How about no.
Luckily there was a link on the bottom “link it in a different way”, when following this path (By manually entering my IBAN*) Paypal only stated I could then “easily transfer funds back and forth”. Sounded good, until my bank app opened again and stated that if I was pressing the ‘accept’ button, you guessed it, Paypal will have 90 days of access to my balance and all my transactions. This time I pressed ‘cancel’ and thought “I’ll just buy something random and donate the last Paypal cent I own to some random charity”. Got an error message after pressing ‘cancel’ in my bank app, but curiosity got the best of me, I refreshed the Bank Accounts page and there it was, my bank account number. I was able to transfer to it without coupling after all.
Once the funds are on my bank account I will avoid and evangelise avoiding Paypal.
So you could totally transfer without coupling... the real problem was you didn't know your bank account number?
The second ‘attempt’/flow allowed me to enter my IBAN. I will change my original comment to reflect that.
I had to convince it that it didn't recognize my bank to eventually put in account numbers rather than give it credentials to your bank's online account. I think I put in the wrong routing numbers to get to that form. Definitely a bad experience!
I don't understand your reply at all.
PayPal just happens to be one of the most used online payment providers, being very trigger happy on this one due to pressure from regulators. This makes PayPal unideal for any businesses that deal with digital goods.
Payment processors will ALL (including stripe, authorize, adyen, etc) lock your account (with your money still in it!) if:
1) You're taking money for a product that will be delivered in the distant future (like tickets for an event, or preorders)
2) Your account has a sudden change in ticket size or quantity
3) You're violating their TOS. On HN that might look like a service that winks about piracy, or being a spamming tool.
Ever since I learned about this ~10 years ago, I've been looking into the details every time someone gets their account shut down, and it's always the above. The way people describe what happened to them to carefully leave out one of those points prevents it from ever being shocking.
>They wouldn't have that option if PayPal had locked the GitHub Sponsors PayPal account.
Does that lock any incoming money or just taking the money out of the account ?
>Several of you have reached out asking why we don’t support certain platforms (including PayPal and Venmo) natively in FUNDING.yml, the file for configuring a “Sponsor” button on a repo. Great question!
>We decided to leave PayPal, Venmo, and others out of the set of supported platforms because there is a less explicit social contract for where the money is going compared to platforms like Patreon, Open Collective, Tidelift, and Community Bridge, to name a few of the platforms we do support. Those are community, creator, open source, or developer-focused—and they make it clear that you are supporting the work of the person or team developing code in that repository.
>We support custom fields so we can monitor funding methods we might not have known about, and iterate accordingly. Good news is you can put PayPal—or any other link—in the custom field, too.
their one benefit - ubiquity - isn't even earned. no, they were just early to the scene 20 years ago, then held their nerve until about 2010 after which the major online players pretty much haven't changed. fuck the current online eco[nomic]-system. the network effects of familiarity nearly always trump competence or quality
my advice: never ever have money in your account. it's just too tempting for them. if you're taking payments, auto-transfer them out. if you use it pay for things, use it via a card. since I realised this, I've not once had to unlock my account, no unsolicited two-factor, not even a dodgy notification. it's almost like they have nothing to gain from locking it anymore :o
Braintree might have been decent as a startup/small player, but getting pushed to the same stage as Stripe make them look struggling IMO.
Used to interface with Adyen and Stripe in the past, and PayPal's Braintree part is way laggier and prone to errors.
if (file.getName().contains("trojan")) {
antivirus.flag("malware");
}(For many it probably won't be to big of a change given that most sponsors are likely either companies or well-earning IT people.)
Then there's the people who still intend to donate, but just don't get around to setting the new payment method.
My guess is that Paypal finally got around telling github to stop accepting this.
501c3 in the US though I'm sure there are derivatives.
https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/not-for-profit-2
The problem is that PayPal’s rules are vague and opaque, and they apply them arbitrarily. You have no real recourse to complain about one of their decisions. I can maybe see how it’s painful for GitHub to deal with them.
I considered switching to using virtual credit cards instead. But being outside the US, the options (at least those I'm aware of) are quite limited and inconvenient.
With PayPal you risk PP defrauding you or otherwise screwing with you, I've personally had them overdraft my linked bank account for no reason. My bank was pissed at them and only reversed the charges after I promised to never give ACH details to PP again.
Sure, but it’s still quite the pain to deal with. Your card can stop working at an random inconvenient time, you quickly have to switch any upcoming recurring payments, you have to spend time on hold with the CC company, etc. My last CC I had compromised I got into a bananas situation where I was having large/expensive packages I never ordered getting dropped off at my door and was then having to deal with the rigmarole of my CC issuer telling me I needed to return them to the shipper for a refund.
Time for PayPal to die
Anyway, it is slightly inconvenient not having a Paypal, but I refuse to do business with them. Hopefully another option comes along to fill the void.