[pytrin]

Paypal to me is the classical example of the incumbent growing stale and detached from its consumer base on which it built its business on. Sellers like Eliot are the bulk of Paypal's business - small businesses who needed a (relatively) easy way to start accepting payments online.

Paypal is just giving every opportunity for someone else to come and get their market share. Hopefully it will happen sooner rather than later.

[Irfaan]

If PayPal is so very terrible (and I believe it), Is there a reason Amazon Payments or Google Wallet haven't overtaken PayPal in this market?

If neither Amazon nor Google's brand recognition hasn't convinced folks (buyers or sellers) to start pushing it instead of PayPal for Internet purchases, I can only hope it's because their solutions are equally terrible - otherwise, I have a hard time seeing how a new player will make headway in this space. And I'd really like a new player. :/

[pytrin]

Amazon payments would be a great alternative, main problem is that it's only available in the US (this is why Kickstarter is still limited to US projects btw). I'm not familiar with the details on Google wallet, but my hunch it's the same reason

[mattmanser]

When Google Checkout launched it was in a right mess. I remember trying to use it and it silently crashed without an error. It was bizarre, all over the forums, no Google response.

It also had an even worse payment flow than paypal. Which is saying something.

You can't ignore early adopters like that so no-one switched.

Also seem to remember it didn't take payments from a lot of countries. Could be wrong.

[coopdog]

It's hard to believe but Google merchant accounts still aren't available outside of the UK and USA. Even Stripe is still USA only.

[dennisgorelik]

Google Checkout (now Google Wallet) is still a mess both technically and with customer support.

[Auguste]

>Is there a reason Amazon Payments or Google Wallet haven't overtaken PayPal in this market?

As a buyer (and not a merchant), I love Paypal because I can have it debit directly from by bank account instead of handing over my credit card information. I hate credit cards, and this combined with Paypal's two-factor authentication gives me some good peace of mind. I haven't seen any other services that provide direct-debit to Australians, and even if they did, they would be useless to me unless they were as ubiquitous as Paypal is. I can use Paypal just about everywhere except for Amazon and O'Reilly. At this point I wouldn't even consider using Amazon or Google Wallet for purchases.

On the other hand, these horror stories have made me very wary of the merchant side of Paypal, and I'd definitely think twice about using them to process payments.

[JoshTriplett]

> As a buyer (and not a merchant), I love Paypal because I can have it debit directly from by bank account instead of handing over my credit card information.

I don't understand this at all. I pay through PayPal via a credit card when a merchant accepts no other form of payment, and if they ever gave me trouble, I trust my credit card provider enough that I don't have to trust PayPal. I wouldn't let PayPal near my bank account, because bank accounts don't have the same level of protection for illegitimate transfers, and PayPal will happily ACH away however much they feel entitled to.

[kalleboo]

> I love Paypal because I can have it debit directly from by bank account instead of handing over my credit card information

You'd rather give the internet a direct line to your bank account to suck out all your money, vs giving it a number to a credit line (which you can refuse to pay if there's any fraud)? I'd like to see the logic behind this.

[Auguste]

I've got it tied to a separate bank account that I transfer funds into whenever I want to buy something. I wouldn't ever connect it to my savings.

[patrickk]

"If PayPal is so very terrible (and I believe it), Is there a reason Amazon Payments or Google Wallet haven't overtaken PayPal in this market?"

eBay would account for some of it. Also, payments is a relatively highly regulated market globally, as evidenced by Stripe trying to expand internationally.

[nmcfarl]

When launched both of these products were problematic, Google from the UI side, Amazon from both the API side and the UI side. And the network effects suck - no one has accounts.

We axed amazon soon after we integrated with them - I gather that now both the API and more importantly the UI are much better, and people can sucessfully use their pre-existing amazon accounts. That would be huge.

Google we still support, but it's usage has plummeted from a low starting place on our site. It'll be dropped on the next rev of the our UI.

[mtrimpe]

As Auguste mentioned already, it's all about lacking direct debit for international customers.

I'm from the Netherlands and if you're a freelancer here you need to provide income statements for 3 years before you can get a credit card.

That meant that until last year I couldn't buy a thing with Google Wallet or Amazon Payments without asking my family for a credit card.

The only thing that worked for me was PayPal (and the iTunes store.)

[kalleboo]

> I'm from the Netherlands and if you're a freelancer here you need to provide income statements for 3 years before you can get a credit card.

That's amazing. Also goes to show anyone who tries to talk about "Europe" is making a useless generalization - here in Sweden I easily got two credit cards when I was a student with no income aside from government student loans.

But don't you have VISA/Mastercard debit cards? In Sweden, there are no longer any ATM cards, everyone gets a VISA or MasterCard instead that works in ATM, stores and online.

[mtrimpe]

You can get a MasterCard debit card while you're a student here as well, which most people get to keep after college.

If you didn't apply or it gets revoked because you were flagged somehow, which happened to me when moving abroad for a year, you end up in the situation I described.

And no, we are still pretty much exclusively ATM based here.

[Daniel_Newby]

They won't even give you a secured credit card, one backed by a cash deposit?

[Karunamon]

>Is there a reason Amazon Payments or Google Wallet haven't overtaken PayPal in this market?

Network effects, name recognition, and forced integration with the only online auction site that matters.