PayPal Attracts Takeover Interest After Stock Slump (bloomberg.com) 29
An anonymous reader shares a report: PayPal, the digital payments pioneer, is attracting takeover interest from potential buyers after a stock slide wiped out almost half of its value, according to people familiar with the matter.
The San Jose, California-based company has fielded meetings with banks amid unsolicited interest from suitors, the people said. At least one large rival is looking at the whole company, while some other suitors are only interested in certain PayPal assets, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.
Buyer interest in PayPal is still at a preliminary stage and may not lead to a transaction, the people cautioned. Founded in the late 1990s, PayPal was an early mover in the world of digital payments. But the company now finds itself in a rut with its customers increasingly turning to alternative ways to pay for things. PayPal's shares have fallen around 46% in New York trading over the last 12 months, giving the company a market value of about $38.4 billion.
The San Jose, California-based company has fielded meetings with banks amid unsolicited interest from suitors, the people said. At least one large rival is looking at the whole company, while some other suitors are only interested in certain PayPal assets, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.
Buyer interest in PayPal is still at a preliminary stage and may not lead to a transaction, the people cautioned. Founded in the late 1990s, PayPal was an early mover in the world of digital payments. But the company now finds itself in a rut with its customers increasingly turning to alternative ways to pay for things. PayPal's shares have fallen around 46% in New York trading over the last 12 months, giving the company a market value of about $38.4 billion.
treating customers like crap (Score:3)
This is what happens when you treat people poorly and limit their choices, they find someone else.
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I've never had a problem, but it boils my blood that they limit passwords to 20 characters.
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PayPal has been my online "Wallet" since I opened an eBay account in something like 1999.
Today, I have a PayPal line of credit, a bit of cryptocurrency, a savings account and a debit account.
If I don't see a "pay with paypal" button during checkout, I don't shop there, I will just find someone who allows it.
I have never had an issue with PayPal. I think they provide a good service and allow me a greater amount of control over my online purchases than a traditional credit card account does.
That said, I am co
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PayPal has been my online "Wallet" since I opened an eBay account in something like 1999.
They were an innovator at the time, but now there are lots of online ways to send money, and PayPal is one of the most expensive. Other than cutting their fee rate (which will hurt earnings), I'm not sure how they can compete as innovation is happening by many other financial players.
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Paypal removed security from my account in the name of convenience. They added some kind of browser fingerprinting that allowed one to make purchases without logging into Paypal. Payments just worked without security.
I called this out to Paypal and they did not have time for me. I used a single curse word in an email and Paypal banned me. I was leaving anyway, fuck Paypal.
So yeah, fuck those assholes. I don't expect someone that handles money to just open all the locks and call it easy to use. Sure, easy to
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I've been on the fence with them for years. I wasn't aware of the browser fingerprinting, but maybe it's happening without my knowledge (?).
I've never given them a phone number, and it boils my blood that anyone thinks a phone, especially a cell phone, and text, is any kind of "security".
So far I haven't had any problems, but I don't use paypal super often. Maybe a couple of times a month. The slightest sign of problems and I'm out.
People at my bank recommended venmo, I think, I'm not sure. I'll check with
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Venmo is owned by PayPal, FYI.
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Yeah, I remember now, thanks. Klarna was what the bank's people suggested, but that was months ago. I have to go there in the next few days and I'll ask again (and NOT the teller whose hands are always beat up because he's an amateur MMA fighter. Not kidding.)
Re:treating customers like crap (Score:4, Interesting)
Long time PayPal user here, for both buying and selling. And yeah, they planted a level of distrust LONG ago with me. I won't refrain from using them when it makes the most sense .... but I won't leave any funds in my account with them or give them any more of my other financial info than absolutely necessary.
Consider:
1. They partnered up with eBay, many years ago, causing the auction site to remove a number of supported payment methods and forcing PayPal as the required way to buy items instead.
2. PayPal is known to suspend perfectly legitimate business accounts if/when there's any political heat coming down on them over it. EG. Small business does gun repair or sells guns and ammo while conforming to all the legal regulations, but there's an uproar at the time because of too many recent school shootings or what-not.
3. I had my own personal account suspended for months, only because I bought an item on eBay from someone who apparently scammed somebody else shortly after that, or did business with another user who was scamming. (Never figured out for certain.)
4. PayPal convolutes what should be more clear cut buyer protection. For example? I had a scammer charging fake monthly subscriptions for some kind of web site or magazine to my checking account one time. Because the charges were displaying as charged through PayPal, it was a big struggle to get my bank to handle it. They mistakenly believed I used PayPal to pay and PayPal was, in turn, pulling money from my checking account to cover the charges. So they insisted I work with PayPal to fix the issue. In reality, my PayPal account was never getting touched at all by any of this. The scammer just made it appear that way on the billing line items/details.
Obvious merge with Tesla or SpaceX (Score:2)
Obviously they need to be purchased by either SpaceX or Tesla. Vertical integration ftw. /s
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Obviously they need to be purchased by either SpaceX or Tesla. Vertical integration ftw. /s
You'd be closing the circle, then. Musk founded PayPal as "X.com" in 1999. He's still the single largest shareholder. So it wouldn't shock anyone.
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No, PayPal was founded as Fieldlink in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Luke Nose, before being renamed Cofinity. They originally made security software for hand-held devices. The PayPal service was launched in 1999. Cofinity merged with X.com in March 2000, taking out a competitor.
Re: Obvious merge with Tesla or SpaceX (Score:2)
But first he'll rename it "Xpay" or something with X in it because X is coolest letter.
And some turning away (Score:2)
because we don't like Peter Thiel and his friends.
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Don't worry, MAGA will eventually turn on Thiel. He's gay and considered one of the good ones, for now at least.
If only there was some way of valuing customers. (Score:2)
I avoid PayPal if possible, as I'm tired of them trying to push crap at me before I can even get to why I went there in the first place. Perhaps if they allowed customers to use their product without constantly trying to advertise to them they might be more popular.
PayPal History of Freezing Accounts (Score:3)
Frozen Accounts
Don't forget that PayPal would routinely freeze accounts for over 180 days or longer for anybody that use them for small business that had a very high volume of credits and debits and they would claim that it was a security reason. But meanwhile they would hold all the money and make the account inaccessible and not even answer to the person why the account was frozen for real.
Every so often you would hear of somebody running a legitimate business and they received a payment from some other PayPal account or person who themselves was flagged as problematic and that would trigger a chain lightning event. Where anybody else associated with that person or that person's account or a hacked person's account would just spread like wildfire and freeze every associated account for a very long time. Without anybody having the ability to do anything about it or get a real answer or even identify what happened.
You made a sale or you purchase something from somebody else online. You paid them with PayPal and zap. Your account is frozen and you don't really have an answer to what happened and any money you had in there is gone for months. If you will ever get it back or not, you will never know. And support will not tell you. They'll just say security reason and your account is frozen.
The government had to step in and threaten regulation but PayPal would still routinely do this to a bunch of small business owners and eBay sellers.
Banking Accounts Linked
Luckily I stayed away from PayPal and only used it as a way to pay for eBay or receive money from online sales and immediately transfer the money out of there directly into my bank account. I didn't like the reason why I had to have my bank account linked but I figure if something went wrong I go straight to my Chase Bank and complain to them and I would have much better results than complaining to PayPal which would hide there support number on their website for a very long time and people had to get it from Reddit or from Google searching.
Other Apps More Popular
Everybody that I know is using Venmo or CashApp or Zelle to send money between each other. So PayPal is pretty much on its way out but online web stores still do a lot of sales through PayPal so it's going to be a very long and slow burn to replace it because it is so tightly integrated with web, front ends and shopping cart systems.
Crap (Score:3)
My Paypal account has been locked for 10 years now, because my personal email was linked to a now defunct business, and this traps you into a circle of ‘need more information to unlock your account’, business no longer exists, PayPal can’t compute, can’t unlink the account.
They also took ages to get 2FA, and this awful habit of auto logging you in for payments, so if someone had your cookies they could just make purchases without any addition authentication. Just change the delivery address and fraud is your friend.
Useless organisation.
Meh. (Score:1)
You come here often? (Score:1)
Credit card does everything (Score:2)
Now, money can't be anonymous, so PayPal functions as a second bank holding your real account, hostage. There's no advantage to that. Also, credit cards are accepted at everyone online shop-front: There's no need to give Personally Identifying Information to PayPal