“If you’re someone who’s buying products on the web, we know who is buying the products where, and we can leverage the data,” Grether said in a statement to the WSJ. He also said that PayPal will receive shopping data from customers using its credit card in stores.
A PayPal spokesperson tells the WSJ that the company will collect data from customers by default while also offering the ability to opt out.
PayPal is far from the only company to sell ads based on transaction information. In January, a study from Consumer Reports revealed that Facebook gets information about users from thousands of different companies, including retailers like Walmart and Amazon. JPMorgan Chase also announced that it’s creating an ad network based on customer spending data, while Visa is making similar moves. Of course, this doesn’t include the tracking shopping apps do to log your offline purchases, too.
Alternatives? Except for not using services that require PayPal.
In America they have VenMo and CashApp, in Europe, it feels like PayPal have a monopoly.
Pretty sure Venmo is owned by PayPal.
correct; acquired in 2013.
Ha! They really need competition.
Paypal was the fast way to transfer money until 2024 in the EU.
But the EU has recently made it mandatory for banks to offer free SEPA instant payments. 15 seconds to send up to 100k as far as I know.
BTW: Look at the share price and how it went down and did not recover…
I’d never heard of SEPA. That’s actually quite cool. Does that mean no more seeing payments pop up six days later.
SEPA is actually what we had so far. That is how the employer sends you the money. That’s how you pay rent. That’s how you pay off debts. That’s how your insurances take money from you.
SEPA instant payments is what’s new and it allows to transfer money to someone in under 15 seconds. It existed for a few years, but usually cost money and was not even available for all banks. That’s changing now. Step 1 is making it free and force all banks to offer it. Step 2 will be replacing the old, slower system with it completely.
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain. It’s posts like this why I enjoy Lemmy so much. Thanks for educating me.
Same happened in Australia. A few years back they brought in osko payid. Which means you can send money from your bank directly to others via their email or phone number. And it arrives in seconds.
Also free.
As much as I’d like PayPal to have competition, I’ve seen the share chart and there’s a flexion just this month (not a so small one, but it’s just a month).
What the EU has done with instant bank transfer is great, but I think that the 15 seconds limit is too much for that function to be used by other apps (Satispay) to transfer money. I mean, 15 seconds is nothing, but waiting in line at the supermarket standing still for 15 seconds will fill an eternity!
The 15 seconds are more like a maximum. It’s usually faster. Taking out you phone and maybe entering the phone PIN, opening the banking app and entering a PIN for that takes some time, too.
The advantage that Paypal still has: It’s like a social network. People are connected and it might be easier to use it instead of first asking people for their IBAN code to send the money…
If it’s less than that, it could work. The problem about asking the IBAN could be bypassed by QR codes in shops. I think that the instant bank transfer (if very fast) could help the rise of other apps that don’t have to pay fees to the credit card circuit and so be competitive and compete with PayPal.
What about privacy-respecting alternatives?
The closest you will get is a prepaid credit card. The reason why PayPal are so big is because they’re universally accepted.
Is it just me or are cheques still the best, cheapest, most secure, and generally universal way to send money from one person to another?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot the past few weeks.
Yes I know that the MIRC line isn’t secured but your account is still protected by the bank for any fraud. You don’t get those same protections from venmo or cashapp.
The closest I’ve seen is zelle but not every bank supports it.
Every bank supports depositing in a check.
Yep, it’s just you. The number one thing is the instant transaction.
Cheques? Who uses those anymore? I see them useful maybe for a down payment for a house. I don’t think that there is a merchant today that would accept them.
Yeah because it’s really secure anyone can take out your cash via ACH or whatever by your account numbers on that piece of paper.
Your bank is required to investigate and such, yeah? And you will most likely get your money back - after a while - if their investigation determines it was fraudulent. But a long process that’d be avoided by having a safer electronic transfer system. And what will you do if the bank thinks it’s some friendly fraud?
Not worth it. I don’t even like direct debit. No one should initiate taking money from my account other than myself.
Just using a debit/credit card? I still choose not to do this when there’s a PayPal option though, just feels riskier!
I really miss the fake credit card number paypal used to have for sites that didn’t take paypal
You know when you use your credit card and it shows the last 4 digits on the receipt big data collects all that and knows exactly who you are and where you shop and is used for targeted ads and demographic research. If you ever used your credit card where they know your name/ delivery address and even if you didn’t they know exactly who you are. This technology is old as dirt not even sure why PayPal announced this like it’s a big deal.
That sounds pretty illegal under the GDPR though, hence why I usually feel fine paying by card if the website feels like they obey the law.
I don’t mean online where gdpr applies I mean in physical stores. My company uses a service called bridg but there’s others. If you swipe your card to buy something at my business and I don’t know anything about you except that card swipe. I can find out who you are, where you live, your approximate income etc. Then cross reference that with any other database that can be bought or other bridg partners to know your spending habits. Then I can say find me more customers matching op profile for my business and that’s how you get targeted in the real world. Online it’s 100x easier for them because you are typically getting something mailed.
GDPR isn’t just an online thing, it applies everywhere so I don’t know how your bridg software is getting away with that!