Is This Really The Right Way?
With the latest financial difficulties worldwide, financial institutions are looking for ways to survive or should I say get rich? Governments are looking to tax everyone and financial institutions are doing the same in their own way.
This morning I was reading the news and came across an article about PayPal. This payment processor giant is always a controversial subject as the ratio between the good and bad they do is huge and not in the favor of good.
They started making waves recently when they announced their plan to allow users to buy, hold and pay with crypto through their PayPal wallet. Every article spinner was writing about how good this news is for the crypto world but I suspect not many have ever had to deal with the giant, to really know the traps and what they are really doing.
I'm one of the luckiest PayPal user as I've always been at the right end of the equation, I've always been a buyer, never a seller, thus I've been protected every single time something went wrong and apart from the high transaction fees, I can't really complain. However, I can't be blind to what has been happening, how many users have been treated poorly over the years, decades.
PayPal has been protecting buyers more, from day one for a good reason.
Shortly after PayPal's IPO, the company was acquired by eBay on October 3, 2002, for $1.5 billion. More than 70 percent of all eBay auctions accepted PayPal payments, and roughly 1 in 4 closed auction listings were transacted via PayPal. PayPal became the default payment method used by the majority of eBay users, and the service competed with eBay's subsidiary Billpoint, as well as Citibank's c2it, Yahoo!'s PayDirect, and Google Checkout. source
For many, PayPal has been and maybe still is the only payment option internationally. I've been trusting them as I've always known anything happens, I'm protected and I have known this not just based on what people are saying, but based on my own experience.
The new crypto adoption by PayPal has not been the best news as crypto was invented (ten years ago) to eliminate the middleman, among other reasons and PayPal is a middleman, that is acting the same way as banks now.
Get ready, Canada! PayPal’s "inactivity fee" comes into effect in December, and you haven’t got long to make sure you avoid getting charged.
Earlier this year, the money-moving company announced that it would start charging some customers for not using their account enough. source
Fining starts from December 15, 2021, so if you're in this situation, you'd better log in and spend some money, like it or not. Why? Because PayPal said so!
The company says if you haven't used PayPal in the last year and you have less than $20 in your account, the fee will take your balance down to $0. If you have more than that, you’ll lose $20 exactly, which would be the maximum amount. source
With money flowing into crypto with breakneck speed now, banks and other financial institutions are starting to lose ground. Banks are already taxing people for not using their money, now PayPal is going to do it too. Soon others are going to join in as (to them) this looks like a good way to make some money.
This is what happens when it's not your key, not your money. You have no control over your funds, banks and taxman can freeze your account, take away your money and you have no say in it.
For now, the new rule is applicable only to Canada, but I don't see why they can't extend it to be applicable worldwide. I'm not sure now many PayPal accounts are in Canada and how many are inactive, but I suppose there are quite a few as such rules are based on previous studies and they must have a good reason to do so.
I suppose some of those account holders that have not been using their accounts for months, maybe years, are going to quit using PayPal. This is how the giant is going to lose clients. Slowly but surely. There's no reason yet for PayPal to worry as in may parts of the world using PayPal is still the only way to pay for goods bought from abroad, but not for long.
With crypto adoption, they are going to lose more and more ground. Wallet owners are perfectly capable of handling their own finances, there's no need to feed the middlemen. Whoever is able to recognize which is the right way forward is going to win. The others are going to lose. It is that simple.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
