Paypal FYI
 

Dear Merchant -

Starting today, Friday, November 1st, PayPal will begin the process of deducting $1500 from your PayPal account for the Visa and MasterCard high risk merchant registration fee. We plan on having all accounts finished by Monday, November 4th.

Per our previous email, we will be deducting $1500 from your PayPal balance. PayPal will contact you if you have inadequate funds in your account.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected].


The PayPal Team

damn

Does this apply to adult only or do Ebay sellers have to pay too?

That's how we could get our case heard, piss off the Ebay users!

I spoke with them a week or two ago. The operative words are

high risk merchant

like us not them (subscriptions and memberships not hard goods)

Oops, cleaning out my account now, just in case ....

Why am I not getting any emails from Paypal regarding this? I haven't recieved anything from them regarding this.

I think you're full of shit. They haven't posted anything about this on their site, not in the update section.

Sorry if you are not on their "high risk" merchant mailing list. Maybe you will get lucky and not have the $1,500.00 pulled from you. Unfortunately we and I suspect more than a few others are on the list.

is this a joke?

..and a good one!

For those of you who have never seen the original Paypal email here it is in living black and white.

Dear Merchant,



We would like to update you on new Visa & MasterCard regulations that affect the way Internet Payment Service Providers (IPSPs) such as PayPal conduct business. Both Visa & MasterCard require high-risk merchants to complete a registration form, pay an initial registration fee, and pay renewal fees on an annual basis (details below).



We value our Merchants and are dedicated to providing you with the high quality service to which you are accustomed. Please note that these fees are imposed by Visa and MasterCard, not by PayPal. In keeping with PayPal's core policy of not charging set-up costs and/or annual fees to our Merchants, PayPal (in contrast with many IPSPs) will not add any additional or hidden costs to these Visa & MasterCard fees.



PayPal, like all other IPSPs, must comply with the regulations. In order to assure your continued access to PayPal's transaction platform, we need you to provide the requested information by November 1st. If we do not hear from you by the close of business on November 1st, PayPal will be unable to process your transactions until all such information has been submitted.



While some IPSPs have announced that they will cease processing for non-US merchants, that is not the case with PayPal. PayPal will continue to process transactions for high-risk merchants in the United States, Canada and Europe through our existing banking arrangements in these areas. In addition, we will continue working to expand our banking relationships worldwide.



Below is a summary of the requirements for both Visa and MasterCard:



VISA:

* Visa will require an initial registration fee of $500

* Visa will require an annual renewal fee of $250

* Paypal must provide Visa with monthly sales, chargebacks and refund information on each Adult merchant.



MasterCard:

* MasterCard will require an initial registration fee of $1,000

* MasterCard will require an annual renewal fee of $500





We will be sending another email out shortly requesting the specific information we will need to bring your business into compliance with the new regulations. We will also provide instructions on fee collection.



Should you have any questions, please send an email to [email protected]. We will endeavor to respond in a timely manner.



Very truly yours,



The PayPal Team

1500 huh theyre goin ez on ya

:321GFY

I was away from GFY for a while, but... Where did the MasterCard stuff come from? And why are the PayPal numbers for Visa alone different from the other IPSPs?

interesting, auction fraud is MUCH higfher than with pornsites, yet we're high risk and they are fine?

good question

For as big - and popular - and convienient - and whatever PayPal is - they suck.

Not just because of this, that's just a shockwave from the Visa BS as of lately, but for a million other other reasons.

I'm jumping through hoops with them right now and getting really pissed with them.

What's that site I saw before ... www.paypalsucks.com !!

apparently $250 of your fee goes to the processor, and Payapl decided not to take a cut.

Everyone here better listen... this dickblast knows his shit!!

This is 100% genuine.

If you DID NOT receive an email then you are NOT affected.

If you received an email then you WILL need to pay the fee.

I spoke to paypal about this.

Kind regards

Terry
www.projectvoyeur.com

I spoke to PayPal as well, asking if subscription sales, which I had been considering for one of my pay sites, would fall under the new IPSP/VISA regulations (this was before any news of MasterCard fees). Their reply was ambiguous- some subscription sales would be deemed subject to the enforcement of the new rules, some wouldn't. The message ended with "if you haven't received notification of additional fees, then they don't apply to your case and there's no need to worry".

Now, it's clear that it is NOT a matter of Visa requiring extra money from each and every account being processed by an IPSP, but only those that are flagged as "high risk" (read "adult industry"). This is why you don't find it on the "outside" of these third-party processing sites- it isn't a straight up deal and only SOME accounts are going to fall within this (arbitrary) group.

This doesn't smell right at all...

I wonder if Paypal is perhaps tagging everyone who uses their subscription service that is above a certain dollar threshold? I mean if you're doing say $1000 a month or more with them, you're probably going to pay the $750 to avoid losing those sales. On the other hand if you're doing $50 a month with them, you're gonna walk.

With Paypal's model, you're not really getting a chargeback as such. When you receive a subscription, the money is transferred from that user's paypal account to your's. You have no idea how he funded his account. It could've been via his checking account, a credit card or used tractor parts on an Ebay auction. There's no way for you to tell.

If the user does a chargeback, he's actually charging back funding of his Paypal account. As best I can tell, their data doesn't associate a funding transaction directly to a site. They're more of a stored value system than a credit card processor.

Now with the other IPSPs, you have the option of not paying the $750 and just ceasing to accept Visa thru that processor. I wonder if Paypal will do the same? My hunch is they cant....and it's because they're not really a processor. Again, there's no way to determine where the funds being transferred from a user to a website originally came from. Would they perhaps just not let you accept payments from users who have a Visa tied to their account as the default funding method?

I dunno...lots of unanswered questions about Paypal and they're not answering them. My hunch is they do not know the answer themselves.

Hey...The fee is for PayPal MERCHANTS. If you merely have a PayPal account that you use to transfer money for auctions, and the like, the regulations don't apply to you.

One very important thing to note is that Paypal is charging $500 for Visa and $1,000 for MasterCard. I can add that we had to pay MasterCard $1,000 on our merchant account earlier this year.

I wonder when the other players, Ibill, CCbill, Epoch etc are going drop the MasterCard news on people?

What's the criteria whether you'll have to pay or not? I didn't recieve an email but I do use paypal as a subscription option to membership sites.

I can't get a hold of anybody on the phone to ask them myself.

The criteria appears to be if you are on their list of "high risk" merchants. Not all adult site owners received the email and apparently some non adult site owners have received it.

Hard to tell what they are thinking.

Yeah but after all is said and done it's very interesting to me that CCBill, iBill and the other bloodsuckers did indeed decide to grab some extra cash for themelves along the way.

An extra $250 at registration and an additional $125 a year. Very nice you fuckers.

Paypal may have it's share of problems but they're not outright crooks trying to hide behind the skirts of Visa.

Too funny all the way around..... Hee. Hee.

:1orglaugh

Just go Glo-Bill!



:2 cents: