Why PayPal does not like BitCoin sellers?

[Paybis]

We have been in BitCoin sale business for more than a 1.5 years and started offering people to purchase Bitcoin paying with PayPal on localbitcoins and paxful as well as our own website Paybis.com

There was a learning curve, to find a safe process and avoid chargebacks, but the story is about different topic.

First we started with European Business PayPal account, after 6-7 month it got shutdown with comment that BitCoins are not regulated in EU thus it's too high risk.
At same time we learned that there are people and companies in USA selling BitCoins for PayPal without any problems. So we did same, opened a company, opened PayPal business account, 6-7 month same story, account closed with comments that it's too high Risk.

The important thing is that we were 100% open to PayPal in what we do, during reviews, phone calls and all disputes. We even won around 50% of all disputes. As result having less then 1% in chargebacks in total.

PayPal never commented or answered any emails addressed to compliance team, where we explained our business model, verification processes, etc.

The market is still there, it's still growing, some traders like us disappear, new ones are getting into the game thinking it's such a great place. But in reality, 90% of people who we know that sell BitCoin for paypal get their accounts shut down. As result, they have to start using new accounts pretending the sell something different, thus PayPal allows them to operate without knowing what they really do.

Is that smart? is PayPal shooting it self in the leg, rejecting honest and transparent sellers? Or maybe it's easier for them to report that there are no high risks merchants and close eyes for under cover operations as long as there are not too many disputes.

I've found a guy who works in PayPal compliance over the web, we agreed that i'll not disclose his name, but i'll put here some of his statements:

• PP usa is regulated as payment trasfer business. I think requires separate licence in each state. Controls are tough but not too tough.
• PP EU is regulated as bank and same as for bitstamp licence probably took years to acquire. PP will not risk loosing licence for 0.5% of extra revenue (risk apetite).
• Usa pushed some good clarifications around and regulatory frameworks giving entities in crypto business operating parameters. EU remain very conservative and regulatory vacum is a problem. Well established entities will not risk relationships with regulators in those unclear conditions.

So these statements explain the reason why PayPal Europe might not want to deal with us, but still does not explain why PayPal USA turned away.

What's your experience with PayPal? Despite that we all know that PayPal is EVIL Do you think they will changed their policies in EU after new FATF guidelines will be released? Do you have ideas how this could work with PayPal USA?

[romanticks]

I guess it's because BTC is a serious competition to them, Unfortunately other than them showing improvement in there attitude to BTC there isn't much that can be done, Opening a law suit that may cost allot of money is the other option but not many can do it.

[ivanpoldark]

Paypal is controlled by the US government, and it is impossible to to trace Bitcoin and take it taxes. Until the government will not take control of cryptocurrency, it will not be officially exchange them.

[ajaxmoor]

Paypal is controlled by the US government, and it is impossible to to trace Bitcoin and take it taxes. Until the government will not take control of cryptocurrency, it will not be officially exchange them.

To correct you on that, Paypal is not owned by the government and is a private entity and has always been that way. They essentially offer what bitcoin does, but at high rates and in a centralized way, hence they would never want anything to rise which would affect their profits.

[Daisy14]

With the tight control PayPal has, lots of people would migrate from PayPal to bitcoins. They had better learn to work with bitcoins if they do not want to go out of business eventually.

[eaLiTy]

Dealing with paypal is really difficult ,if you are doing regular business with paypal and if you have  a good amount of balance in your account they will find a way to ban the account citing some reason or the other and i am sure many people in here have this kind of experience if they ever used paypal for doing any services ,i do had bad experience from them as they confiscated my account multiple times long back

[Dahhi]

Now that Amazon is accepting bitcoin payments using iPay you, PayPal should find a way of allowing bitcoin payments as well.

Being left out the current trend is never a good business strategy.

[btvGainer]

I guess it's because BTC is a serious competition to them, Unfortunately other than them showing improvement in there attitude to BTC there isn't much that can be done, Opening a law suit that may cost allot of money is the other option but not many can do it.

Exactly.Bitcoin is indeed a serious competition to PayPal and if it become mainstream, PayPal would have to wind up their business.You obviously can't expect business competitors to promote each other.

[toptek]

really I sell bitcoins all the time to Paypal with  my coinbase account and it's less a hassle then with my bank in fact i did a instant sell to paypal a few hours ago .
 my paypal account is a business account i don't use it that way.

Go thu coin base that might work .!!!

https://www.coinbase.com

despite what some say about coin base i don't have any issue with them once i set up my account and proved who i was .

I have more hassle with my Bank on how i get my cash or deposit it ,with just cash or checks because of that I sell it to paypal then transfer the money to my bank and get it faster.  checks on my bank with money in the account to another account can take days to clear with my bank they started getting  real crappy lately just  doing normal business with them .
 I would change banks but that's can be even worse with direct deposit  so I work around there issue for now .

[U2]

Nobody knows the real answers. Maybe the people who make that kind of decision are just really behind. I've tried to figure it out many times and they just give weird blanket statements about it but no real answers. At some point they'll be using cryptocurrencies as a former of payment but until then, it's against the ToS.

[user27]

Paypal sees bitcoin as direct competition, as Western Union does as well. Have you seen the court case that WU launched against a savvy bitcoiner for "stealing their advertisement design"? This just proves that they are getting to the point where they are so desperate to get people away from bitcoin that they are willing to post nonesense bullshit like that court case.

Anyways, Paypal just doesn't like bitcoin. It is a for-profit organisation, is paypal. Bitcoin is decentralised, and not for profit. Paypal knows that their technology is behind. They are just really really salty that bitcoin is so good.

[shield132]

As I know paypal and coinbase were going to make agreement than would allow customers to do more with bitcoins than before. As I know they integrated it already but reality is very different. I read on this forum that many users were banned for buying and selling bitcoin with paypal.

My experience is that it's bad for sellers, less bad for buyers. I can't understand their aim because they are freezing accounts. If they continue like this, it seems that they aren't going to add bitcoin payment.

[Zadicar]

As I know paypal and coinbase were going to make agreement than would allow customers to do more with bitcoins than before. As I know they integrated it already but reality is very different. I read on this forum that many users were banned for buying and selling bitcoin with paypal.

My experience is that it's bad for sellers, less bad for buyers. I can't understand their aim because they are freezing accounts. If they continue like this, it seems that they aren't going to add bitcoin payment.

With this kind of situation we could really say that paypal is not really fully coordinating with bitcoin because they somehow blocking it or making some problems arise just to make some excuses for them to deny bitcoin to be part on their service. Well if this is the case then its not really surprising for me since paypal does really see that bitcoin is really a great and strong competitor on their service.

[iamTom123]

Dealing with paypal is really difficult ,if you are doing regular business with paypal and if you have  a good amount of balance in your account they will find a way to ban the account citing some reason or the other and i am sure many people in here have this kind of experience if they ever used paypal for doing any services ,i do had bad experience from them as they confiscated my account multiple times long back.

I am sure you are not alone with your bad experience with PayPal. I experienced almost the same treatment coming from Paypal and I swear that if possible I would not want to deal with them anymore. Now, Paypal is feeling the heat coming from Bitcoin and soon they can be out of the business...and that is good news.

[chesatochi]

Paypal should open his mind and allow the payment of bitcoin with his platform without closing PayPal account with crappy arguments. The only thing I hate about this company is when you sell something on Ebay they charge a fee, when you convert a currency to another currency they don't give you a good rate and now they close accounts

[barbarah]

if Paypal allow the payment of bitcoin in his plaform it will be the end of paypal.

[Hazir]

There are 2 reasons why PayPal doesn't like dealing with Bitcoin:

1. In p2p trading when you use PayPal to purchase BTC you can be a scammer and claim that you never received any BTC from that guy you were dealing with and ask for refund.
How PayPal can confirm and check whether you are telling the truth or not?

2. PayPal is similar to bitcoin, as PP is internet payment provider so bitcoin is its natural rival in that field.

But PayPal apparently has no problem when dealing with companies which can automate bitcoin purchasing, like Coinbase - you can use PP to buy bitcoins there.

[Tmdz]

The big reason is their business model is built around buyer protection.  So if a seller scams a buyer there is no way for them to charge back the bitcoin after it leaves their own bank.

[predic]

PayPal can confirm and check whether you are telling the truth or not by checking if recipient BTC address got bitcoins or not.
I could say I paid some product (not BTC) with paypal and didn't get it, there are poor countries where postmen can steal the package, the same as your traveling bag can disappear at the airport. there is the way for paypal to see if you got BTC or not, every transaction can be checked at blockchain.info.

peter thiel and paypal are NSA company and they blocked wikileaks, that was clear politics and not business.
nsa and cia doesn't make companies by themselves then they use some people for that (coinbase, ycombinator, in-q-tel, etc).
they don't hide it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

[Bitcoin0916]

Yes, because Paypal and bitcoin different we can know what is the best payment system. I use Paypal about 7 years ago, and I hate because my amount was frozen. After that is enough for me to say "good bye" to Paypal.