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Comment by 0xEF

3 days ago

What's the best alternative?

It's easy to say "don't use PayPal" but if you're going to say it, you need to do the hard part of suggesting a viable alternative for eCommerce that has as broad a reach and acceptance as PayPal. Stripe? Almost none of the outlets I do business with use it. Venmo? Same company as PayPal. Back to using credit card numbers? The more we spread those around online, the higher the chance they get stolen and used, probably in refund scams like the one OP describes.

People need an alternative with some degree of trust and most consumers, by my reckoning anyway, would prefer a single entity that is accepted everywhere. Right now, that's unfortunately PayPal.

Personally I've had way less issues with stripe, especially in terms of fraud detection.

Also not sure what and where business is but in Europe it's common to just use a proxy provider where credit card is just one of many options and you use a central gateway (similar to stripe)

You'd have to check your local options. At least one of my local banks offers something more advanced than PayPal. And there are several of these proxy providers in my country.

Edit:// if you just want low fee, fast and risk free transactions we all know there is only crypto

  • Yeah. It’s ridiculous how crypto gets so much hate here, yet there are constant, often heart wrenching posts about the failures and even near-malfeasance of payment processing systems. The paradoxical claims that crypto has no use case except fraud and crime, juxtaposed with the lamentation and gnashing of teeth over the misery of traditional payment systems is enough to provoke an existential examination of the senses.

    I honestly think it must be mostly sour grapes, since by far, cash and other traditional payment methods facilitate the vast, vast majority of crime and fraud, and cryptocurrency is the only universally accessible, trustless, (nearly) costless, instant, global system for the transfer of value between two parties.

    It is by far a better system, even with its flaws. Which is why, yes, many criminals use it, just as they use cash. Because it works.

    • Nobody claims that crypto doesn't have a use case. They claim that it has failed at its use case. You can't use it to buy things easily or safely. Buying a bunch of crypto on the internet and looking at a graph every day hoping the line goes up isn't useful.

      Its use case is still fraud and crime: when laundering money or fencing stolen goods, you expect the process to be difficult, dangerous and to have to pay a large fee. Crypto is a clear improvement on older criminal methods. It's not an improvement on credit cards.

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    • I am also amazed by the resistance to change here as there is a system clearly more efficient and transparent. It's just a matter of time in my opinion. BTW you can remove the (nearly) in "(nearly) costless", some solutions provide 0 fees and no inflation.

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What's wrong with Trustly, Adyen and others among the ~40 alternatives we maintained integrations with at the casino operator I was working at almost ten years ago?

  • Haven't heard of them at all, that's what's wrong.

    They may be great services, of course, being that I, a single consumer, am not a barometer for the success of a payment platform. But whoever they are, they're not being used by major retailers, distributors or manufacturers that I shop with both personally and professionally.

    • IIRC Ebay uses Adyen. I think Paypal uses Trustly in some significant markets.

      I don't know why they didn't show up early in your research, as they are among the most well known and easy to find. Ingrid is lesser known and mostly active in e-commerce in the european markets.

    • Adyen are everywhere for in-person payments where I live (Ireland).

      Worldpay/Stripe seem to be the most common providers for ecommerce.

      More generally, payments are painful so finding a good provider is very, very important.