deskthority

Hi all,

In response to the thread by Jefferai [1] about how Paypal can be a pain in the neck, and because Paypal's fees are annoying, I was wondering if anyone in the US would prefer to use Square Cash [2] for funds collection for group buys. I have used it for many personal payments with friends and family, and I think it's way better. After I asked 7bit if it might become an option, he recommended I bring it up here and check the level of interest.

First of all, there are no fees. The entire system operates through the debit card system, which means the card processing overhead is passed through to banks. Second, there are reasonable sending ($250/week) and receiving limits ($1000/month) which can be raised to $2500/week send and unlimited receive (maybe? - I have a support ticket for this question) by verifying your name, address, and SSN (edit: you only need to give the last 4 digits) for anti-money-laundering purposes [3, 4]. And third, it's quite fast, depending on the issuing bank's clearing policies.

On top of all that, it's very easy to use. You simply email the person you want to pay with the amount in the subject line, and CC to cash@square.com. For anyone who doesn't have a linked debit card yet, the system offers to have them link one. After that, the receiver simply gets an email asking them to accept or refuse the payment, and voila. (At the time of this post, their main page [2] offers to email you $1 to demonstrate how it all works.)

Please consider trying it the next time you need to send money to someone, and respond here if you'd be interested in using it for group buys!

Thanks in advance for your comments.

[1] http://deskthority.net/off-topic-f10/ho ... t7312.html
[2] https://square.com/cash
[3] https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article ... ding-limit
[4] https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article ... ving-limit

Heard of them, but only from Americans on the internet. Website suggests it only works in there, Canada and Japan at the moment anyway. To take off here, it must support 7bit himself!

Square Cash, Popmoney, Google Wallet, plain old Square...there are lots of options for those in the US.

PayPal is nice because you don't have to support multiple services depending on country, so it's easier on the collectors. It's not because the collectors don't know of the alternatives. If someone in the U.S. had asked me to, I would have happily taken some other method. It's just not publicly offered so that both payees and collectors don't have to keep track of multiple sets of rules. (In fact, since my PayPal troubles, I've paid Gene via GW out of necessity.)

I think you missed a main point though. There is one thing that can be done to have avoided the problem, and that's making people mark the payments as services. Easy peasy. The rest of the stuff... The 200 transaction/20k limit... that's U.S. tax law. Maybe you could get around it by using multiple services to collect, but I wouldn't count on it, especially if you are giving them your SSN to enable higher limits. That also identifies you so that the IRS can add up your activity across services if they want. Maybe they don't, but it's an expensive gamble when the data is there to give them the info they need.

The problem really isn't PayPal as long add people mark their payments right. Not to say other services can't be used but definitely not as the only supported service due to country limitations.

No, Paypal is a monopoly and as such they do whatever they please. I remember not long ago they blocked Mailpile kickstarter campaign (billed as a service of course) just because they didn't like the project (it was the anti NSA period). They received such a bad news and social network coverage all over the world that they had to unfreeze $45000, without all that community noise they would have kept that money for themselves.

AFAIK paymill is one of the few alternatives available in Europe.

As an European, I think we should consider a global alternative to paypal to be able to pay in USD, CAD, JPY, EUR, GBP,…
7bit talked about Bitcoin few month ago but IMHO virtual currencies are too volatile to be unrisky : just see the fluctuation of Bitcoin price in USD all the last year and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Paymill seems interesting but I don't understand the change rate system and it's not available to American and Asian transfers.

If someone is willing to collect money via Square Cash, I can add this payment method. Just let me know.

7bit wrote:If someone is willing to collect money via Square Cash, I can add this payment method. Just let me know.

Preferentially add Google Wallet. Then Square Cash and Popmoney. Would have to check there various limits though. And you should warn collectors about the possible tax limits across services.

Google Wallet:

"There's a transaction limit of $10,000 USD and a $50,000 USD transfer limit per 5 day period. This includes both money sent to others as well as money transferred in and out of your Wallet Balance. Please keep in mind that these limits may be subject to change at any time."

Note that it charges the sender fees separately from the transaction so no need to add the fees on top.

Popmoney has minimal fees since it deals directly with bank accounts. It doesn't seem to have receiving limits so long as they're not "requested".

That's actually an advantage to Popmoney...presumably since it goes directly between bank accounts there isn't much danger of money getting frozen, outside of individual transactions.

BTW, 7bit, if you add these I can collect again for a while

Just pm me the details.