[HN Gopher] GitHub Sponsors will stop supporting PayPal
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GitHub Sponsors will stop supporting PayPal
Author : gearsandbeers
Score : 120 points
Date : 2023-01-23 21:43 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.blog)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| More warning would have been ideal, but perhaps it's a security
| issue. Or a business negotiation issue. It's apparently something
| they don't want to tell us about, and are in a (relative to usual
| deprecation) hurry about.
|
| I bet a lot of sponsorship dollars will be lost when people do
| not update.
|
| I wonder if this will effect non-US donors especially. In
| general, I'm pretty sure paypal is accessible to more people than
| visa/mastercard. Over the summer they announced some
| international expansion to who can receive sponsorship dollars.
| https://github.blog/2022-07-28-github-sponsors-available-in-...
| jenoer wrote:
| I wanted to close my Paypal account just now and they have very
| dark patterns going on. I wanted to send the remainder of my
| balance to my bank account, in order to do so I had to couple my
| bank account.
|
| It directly presented me with the info that if I were to couple
| the account, Paypal will have 90 days of access to my balance and
| all my transactions. How about no.
|
| Luckily there was a link on the bottom "link it in a different
| way", when following this path Paypal only stated I could then
| "easily transfer funds back and forth". Sounded good, until my
| bank app stated that if I was pressing the 'accept' button, you
| guessed it, Paypal will have 90 days of access to my balance and
| all my transactions. This time I pressed 'cancel' and thought
| "I'll just buy something random and donate the last Paypal cent I
| own to some random charity". Got an error message after pressing
| 'cancel' in my bank app, but curiosity got the best of me, I
| refreshed the Bank Accounts page and there it was, my bank
| account number. I was able to transfer to it without coupling
| after all.
|
| Once the funds are on my bank account I will avoid and evangelise
| avoiding Paypal.
| nashashmi wrote:
| * * *
| Karupan wrote:
| I've always used PayPal on GitHub for sponsoring great devs since
| it's the lowest touch option. Strange that there is no
| explanation as to why it's being stopped.
| gernb wrote:
| Is a paying github user it's not the lowest touch option. For
| me they just bill me on the card I'm already paying them with
| so easier than paypal.
| hapidjus wrote:
| Microsoft + Stripe announcement incoming?
| [deleted]
| damsta wrote:
| I do not like PayPal at all, but this decision will bring a lot
| of pain to a lot of developers. A middle finger is due to both
| companies.
| winterqt wrote:
| I honestly had no idea they even supported PayPal in the first
| place, assumed it was just credit card because everything's done
| through Stripe.
| jerryu wrote:
| Good riddance!
|
| Time for PayPal to die
| rvz wrote:
| At least they cannot take your money as hostage anymore via
| GitHub because of their definition of what 'misinformation' is in
| their Terms of Service.
|
| Good riddance.
| Daunk wrote:
| I actually had no idea PayPal was still around, I figured it was
| dead years ago... it should be dead...
| ergonaught wrote:
| I use it on a nearly daily basis, personally and
| professionally, although some of their recent choice around
| "security" are going to end that.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| It gets used a lot for Twitch subs/donations and 99% of other
| products with online donation based monetization models.
| Groxx wrote:
| PayPal is roughly the size of Visa, e.g. in terms of quarterly
| revenue. It's _extremely_ not-dead.
| revskill wrote:
| Its bank integration is flawless though.
| m00dy wrote:
| Crypto fixes this kind of situations. I wonder when we will see
| the flip.
| pavon wrote:
| No it doesn't. Sites like Github and Patreon can pick and
| choose which cryptocurrencies they want to support just like
| they choose which payment processors they support. And creators
| can choose to take donation directly today using whatever
| payment processor they choose. Creators and donors choose to
| use the middlemen because they provide value.
|
| Cryptocurrency doesn't change any of those factors, it just
| makes processing fees and currency instability orders of
| magnitudes higher.
| AlphaCharlie wrote:
| You only need to pay a $10 transaction fee.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| You can't say that in here
| ilyt wrote:
| No, no, don't drive him back, we need clowns to laugh at
| darknavi wrote:
| Any details? They provided no reason in the post.
|
| Has there been recent drama with PayPal?
| ssl232 wrote:
| > Has there been recent drama with PayPal?
|
| Not heard of anything directly involving GitHub but PayPal have
| created a huge amount of drama around updates to their terms of
| service: https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/10/paypal_fine_dis
| inform....
| [deleted]
| johnl1479 wrote:
| Anyone know why GitHub has made this decision?
| JamesCoyne wrote:
| I would speculate that since GH covers fees for sponsorship,
| they've decided Paypal's fees are too steep
| TT-392 wrote:
| Guess I won't be able to sponsor anyone anymore. I guess as a US
| based company they are expecting everyone to just have a credit
| card.
| hhh wrote:
| Or a debit card.
| [deleted]
| dathinab wrote:
| Really GitHub, no details? That looks like something which could
| easily hugely decrease donations for _some_ people.
|
| (For many it probably won't be to big of a change given that most
| sponsors are likely either companies or well-earning IT people.)
| neilv wrote:
| Yeah, just the annoying task of having to go revisit their
| recurring donations, I'd expect to cost some donations, as
| people "I don't have time for this" decide to cancel.
|
| Then there's the people who still intend to donate, but just
| don't get around to setting the new payment method.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| My understanding (when I briefly looked into this about 5 years
| ago) is that Paypal doesn't support sending money for donations
| unless it's actual charitable donations - accepting 'donations'
| for an npm package is against paypal terms of service.
|
| My guess is that Paypal finally got around telling github to
| stop accepting this.
| im3w1l wrote:
| What is an actual charitable donation?
| csours wrote:
| Registered charity?
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Typically it requires being given to an IRS (in the US)
| recognized charity in exchange for no goods or services.
| frereubu wrote:
| In the UK, a payment to an organisation registered with the
| Charities Commission:
| https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/charity-
| commissi...
| [deleted]
| ska wrote:
| Probably means narrowly; a donation to an entity that is
| capable of issuing you a charitable receipt for tax
| purposes ?
| sen wrote:
| I wonder if PayPal did the old "Your account is locked and we're
| keeping your money" thing to GitHub too, as they have too so many
| others.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Unlikely, since this is a full one-month notice period for the
| GitHub Sponsors change. They wouldn't have that option if
| PayPal had locked the GitHub Sponsors PayPal account.
| ilyt wrote:
| Could be because of history of past problems
|
| >They wouldn't have that option if PayPal had locked the
| GitHub Sponsors PayPal account.
|
| Does that lock any incoming money or just taking the money
| out of the account ?
| redox99 wrote:
| Blows my mind that that's legal. If they lock your account they
| should be obliged to still show a form to withdraw to a bank
| account you own.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| They do. I got my account locked below I had opened it when I
| was below 18 and they allowed me to withdraw the thousands I
| had on without any problem, from the moment it was locked.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| PayPal isn't a bank. It doesn't have depositors, just plain
| creditors. (Oversimplifying.) It should have to disclose this
| more thoroughly. But there is a legitimate niche for low-
| compliance deposit-like instruments in our financial system.
| bosie wrote:
| Isn't paypal a bank in europe and is supervised by CSSF due
| to having a banking license?
| miohtama wrote:
| Most financial regulation enables payment providers to have
| unlimited period of account freeze even for the suspect of
| money laundering. Payment providers are legally shielded for
| any liability if they are concerned about money laundering. A
| mere abnormal transaction volume or a single transaction is
| enough for suspicion. The regulation is so single sided that
| any financial institution cannot even reply to your messages
| regarding such cases, as they have criminal liability on
| "tipping money launderers."
|
| PayPal just happens to be one of the most used online payment
| providers, being very trigger happy on this one due to
| pressure from regulators. This makes PayPal unideal for any
| businesses that deal with digital goods.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| What is the official way that someone whose account is
| wrongfully frozen is supposed to get their money back?
| There has to be some answer, at least for US citizens or
| foreigners in the US whose assets are wrongfully frozen due
| to the effects of US law... every civil or criminal
| forfeiture law in the US provides some way for the property
| owner to challenge the seizure, usually involving filing or
| defending some kind of court action. I assume that it would
| be unconstitutional in the US for that not to be possible.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Sue them.
| imglorp wrote:
| In an ideal world, that would go into an escrow account
| which the processor would not be allowed to benefit from--
| to remove the trigger happy incentives-- and which would
| have an arbitration route for the merchant.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| [flagged]
| PCP7 wrote:
| ~~Bitcoin~~ Nano solves this.
| Gigachad wrote:
| [flagged]
| bt4u wrote:
| [dead]
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| No it doesn't. There are numerous tales of exchanges
| closing up and keeping/losing their client's money.
| redox99 wrote:
| Not your keys, not your coins.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| With Bitcoin there is no need to keep your money at an
| exchange.
| malikNF wrote:
| Is it bitcoin's fault when people trust others to manage
| their own btc? "Not your keys not your bitcoin" is a
| manthra that gets repeated by the BTC community every
| single day.
|
| If you can't manage your own coins then btc is not for
| you, use fiat, trust the bankers[1][2] to hold your
| money.
|
| [1]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bank-america-customers-
| report... (January 18, 2023)
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| It is the US dollar's fault when people trust Paypal to
| manage their own US dollar?
|
| See how a ridiculous argument it is?
| malikNF wrote:
| Yes. Paypal exists because fiat currencies can't be moved
| without an intermediary or in paper form.
|
| So yes! IT IS the fault of fiat currencies.
| redox99 wrote:
| Indeed one of the biggest reasons I like cryptocurrencies
| is that I've been burned many times by paypal, payoneer,
| bank accounts, etc.
|
| Just the other day when I tried to withdraw from a certain
| payment processor, which I've done 100s of times and is
| always instant, but it took 3 days because they were
| "validating it" (which makes no sense, it's a withdrawal to
| my own bank account), and I needed that money at that very
| moment, not 3 days later.
|
| The only forms of money that I know for a certainty I can
| move at a moments notice are cash and crypto. Anything else
| I don't really own it.
| malikNF wrote:
| I grew up in a 3rd world country, when I started working
| remote for a company abroad I used to get paid in USD,
| every-time I go to the bank to take my own hard earned
| money, I had to give the bank so many details and had to
| wait multiple days before I can withdraw my own money.
|
| The easiest way to withdraw my money was to ask the bank
| to convert my USD in to my local currency, and if I do
| that I lose close to 6% of my salary.
|
| If I wanted to withdraw my money as USD, the only time I
| was allowed to do it is if I provided the bank with a
| valid flight ticket to prove I was going out of the
| country, and even then, I could only withdraw less than
| 40% of my monthly salary this way. (the % changes
| everytime the central bank wanted)
|
| Every time I see people hating on crypto all I see is
| someone who either bet the farm on a get rich quick
| scheme or someone who comes from a very privileged
| background who haven't had a part of pey-check stolen by
| banks.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| It wouldn't blow your mind if you did a bit of research.
|
| Payment processors will _ALL_ (including stripe, authorize,
| adyen, etc) lock your account (with your money still in it!)
| if:
|
| 1) You're taking money for a product that will be delivered
| in the distant future (like tickets for an event, or
| preorders)
|
| 2) Your account has a sudden change in ticket size or
| quantity
|
| 3) You're violating their TOS. On HN that might look like a
| service that winks about piracy, or being a spamming tool.
|
| Ever since I learned about this ~10 years ago, I've been
| looking into the details every time someone gets their
| account shut down, and it's always the above. The way people
| describe what happened to them to carefully leave out one of
| those points prevents it from ever being shocking.
| vetinari wrote:
| I wonder why they are even allowed to do 1). There are
| entire industries (like airlines, for example) which rely
| on negative working capital to operate at all.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Those dastardly people successful at selling their products
| and services at scale.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Why would it matter to Microsoft? Paypal is an 'opt in' choice
| for people wanting to receive money, so if you didn't want to
| use paypal you didn't need to:
|
| >Several of you have reached out asking why we don't support
| certain platforms (including PayPal and Venmo) natively in
| FUNDING.yml, the file for configuring a "Sponsor" button on a
| repo. Great question!
|
| >We decided to leave PayPal, Venmo, and others out of the set
| of supported platforms because there is a less explicit social
| contract for where the money is going compared to platforms
| like Patreon, Open Collective, Tidelift, and Community Bridge,
| to name a few of the platforms we do support. Those are
| community, creator, open source, or developer-focused--and they
| make it clear that you are supporting the work of the person or
| team developing code in that repository.
|
| >We support custom fields so we can monitor funding methods we
| might not have known about, and iterate accordingly. Good news
| is you can put PayPal--or any other link--in the custom field,
| too.
| tibbon wrote:
| I've seen that PayPal's support, APIs, documentation, etc., is
| substandard. Downtime events are frequent. Getting in touch
| with a human is impossible.
| permo-w wrote:
| my experience with paypal as anything other than a way to buy
| things has been exclusively shit. their "security features" -
| like locking your account because of a "suspicious
| transaction" on a non-primary card that's been expired for 5
| years - are more often than not just excuses to claim your
| money when after sending them scans of your passport, dental
| records, grandmother's birth certificate and wifi password
| you inevitably give up and let it go
|
| the main thing is to make sure that you never ever have money
| in your account. if you're using it to take payments of any
| variety, automatically transfer them out asap-aat. as
| tempting as it may be to use it as one, paypal is not a bank
| account. ever since I started treating it like this, I've not
| had to unlock my account once, no unsolicited two-factor, not
| even a dodgy notification from the app
| avree wrote:
| Amazon just announced that they're strategic partners with
| Stripe. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft had something
| similar cooking.
| dmix wrote:
| With Stripe or to box out PayPal in general?
| janalsncm wrote:
| On a related note, if you add a comment like "Cuba Russia China
| you need better fraud detection" to a Venmo payment they will
| freeze your transaction for a couple of days. I'm sure the same
| is true for PayPal.
| ronsor wrote:
| I saw something similar in a home-grown "antivirus":
| if (file.getName().contains("trojan")) {
| antivirus.flag("malware"); }
| tablespoon wrote:
| Sounds like test-driven development!
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(page generated 2023-01-23 23:00 UTC)