PayPal gets simpler: lets you pay without leaving merchant sites | Hacker News Reader

PayPal gets simpler: lets you pay without leaving merchant sites

venturebeat.com

11 pointsnreece13 comments

Paypal users (on the business site) owe Stripe an increasing debt of gratitude, since "We do what Stripe does 2 years after they do it" may just yet bring Paypal kicking and screaming into a modern UX. (I say that as somebody who likes Paypal, but certainly not for their technical agility.)

See: https://stripe.com/docs/checkout

The last time they did paid Stripe the highest form of flattery was when they redid their API docs, which for literally over ten years were ponderous 400 page PDF documents that you had to get behind a login to find. You can find the new Paypal docs here:

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/

If that looks a little familiar:

https://stripe.com/docs/api

It looked even more familiar the last time I actually used the Stripe docs -- looks like Stripe has restyled since then.

Looking at the screenshot in the article, it seems that the payment screen is embedded in a light-box, as opposed to a popup.

IMO this is not a good idea. You can't see the URL, so you can't verify that you're actually entering your credentials on *.paypal.com (without checking the page source, something an average user won't do). Opens it up to phishing attacks.

At least with the current flow (and for Facebook/Twitter/etc share dialogs) it opens in a popup with an address bar. Easy to verify you're on the correct site.

Good step in the right direction.

What I'd _really_ like is the ability to say "Trust this store".

I buy stuff on Steam with Paypal all the time, and I honestly trust Steam to let me buy stuff for my account. If I could tell Paypal that so it wouldn't make me go via its web page every time I buy a game, that would be great.

I, for one, have been very happy, that when I start paying my shoppings in whateveritisthistime.com, that I am redirected to paypal.com with a green lock on address bar etc. But "Trust this store" would be a great idea for paying in some reputable sites I have personally chosen reputable.

Those were my thoughts as well. I hope there will be the possibility to get the normal redirect as well, I don't really want to enter my PP details on some random site.

The problem is you can only really trust for that exact point in time.

I trust you from now until forever is a horrible model. Look at problems we've got with Certificate Authorities now to see a good example.

Plus think what kind of a target someone like valve becomes when all you have to do is get no their system for 1 second to charge all accounts £15.

If you want something like that I say leave it to services to add their own wallet. If you trust them with a couple hundred the steam wallet it's the same thing.

So, how would I be able to verify that what I'm seeing is actually PayPal's login form, and not some phishing page? I thought that's the reason for doing a full redirect. Or does this only work when you're already logged in on PayPal, and other than that you'd still be redirected?

Indeed, i'm glad i'm not the only one thinking this is a bad thing.. Without the URL bar, there is no direct way to be sure the form isn't fake.. before you know it, many many PayPal accounts will be comprimised..

While it's a valid question, I suppose other payment solutions like Stripe Checkout (https://stripe.com/docs/checkout) and Braintree.js (https://www.braintreepayments.com/docs/javascript) also work on a similar principle and hence pose the same vulnerability.

To be fair, users don't have Stripe or Braintree accounts (usually), the goal there is to get your user to give credit card details, not to give you the login information for their other money handling site.

Apart from the "Remember me anywhere"-feature (which I wasn't aware of, is this a recent addition?), I think Stripe and Braintree.js are recognized by users as yet another credit card form, and not as a virtual bank with a private login the way PayPal is. Most users probably don't even notice they're not handing their CC info to the website, but to some third-party service instead. So they'd have to be comfortable with giving their payment details to the shop anyway.

If I chose PayPal however, which is marketed as a safe way to pay online, I don't want to have to put any trust in the site itself. That's why I want to be able to verify I'm actually entering my login details on PayPal's site.

What would be better is if paypal would stop freezing businesses' account when they receive something as simple as a charge back. Paypal's main market is small businesses who can not afford the time or cost of setting up a merchant account. This is the same businesses who cant afford to have a large chunk of their fund frozen for months at a time while a tiny dispute is resolved

PayPal gets rid of its only good feature. Am I missing something, or are PayPal opening the gates for hackers to inject malicious code into third party websites and steal user credentials? I'm making the prediction right now, that they'll quietly remove this security atrocity after the first year of exploits.

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