I'm not sure if this technically fits here because it's not about a particular buyer or seller BUT it is about a service that we as artists use. I think it's super important information for people to know. If this doesn't belong here I'm sure an admin will tell me and I'll remove it ^ ^
So I've had a number of people ask me why I've stopped using PayPal and started using Square so I figured I'd make a bulletin explaining my reasoning.
More and more I see cases of artists getting completely screwed over by PayPal because PayPal doesn't protect digital artists. I, unfortunately, was one of those people who got screwed over. My experience when dealing with PayPal representatives wasn't a pleasant one at all and goes as follows:
Feb. 14th- I notice that my PayPal account is limited and they wanted me to provide some legal documents to prove my identity. I gladly sent in copies of my legal documents and hoped to get the limitation removed so I could transfer my funds into my bank.
Feb. 18th- I get an email from PayPal saying that my account was permanently limited due to me apparently breaking some of their Acceptable Policy. Which I didn't mind you. It all seemed really strange as I've never gotten any charge backs or any disputes filed against me before. I was really confused as to why they would limit my account. I then check my account and it was true, I had been limited permanently. I then contacted customer support through the website and they just bs-ed me and threw the same copy, paste information that they did in their email. I then pushed more to try and find out how I possibly violated their policies. I never got a reply from them again, they just completely ignored me.
I waited a couple hours and still no reply, at this point I was really getting worried so I called PayPal through their phone number. Once I was on the line with a representative she was very helpful but didn't seem to know what she was doing. She asked me where I sold my art and I told her, I even provided proof that customers were getting my products. She said she would fix it and get back to me within 7-10 days.
Mar. 5th- After two weeks with no word from PayPal I decided to call customer support again. This time, the call was much shorter and much more upsetting. I told the woman about my situation and how I had waited for their call and she said, "I'm so sorry to hear that you had to wait but if you want your account unlimited you're going to have to have to take us to court." I was shocked at that, especially when the other employee said that she was fixing things. She then asked me if I wanted to know why I got limited, to which I said yes. In response in the snarkiest voice ever she said, "Then you'll have to take us to court."
I mean you don't have to like your job but I don't think you should talk to clients like that? Basically I want nothing to do with PayPal anymore.
Now for the reason that I use Square. Square (not cash) has charge back protection for all users of their system and as long as you follow their guidelines when processing your payments then you're covered up to a certain amount per month. Why are we using a service that HURTS ARTISTS. PayPal was designed around EBay for physical sales ONLY. There are better options out there with a multitude of features that makes it easier on both the artist and their clients. Square has an integration with other e-commerce services that easily allows you to fit your needs.
It works internationally, does direct depositing to your bank account, has tons of more features and services for people who provide a service. Just please take some time and take a look into the service yourself. Scams are becoming more and more common, we need to protect ourselves. If PayPal doesn't care about digital artists then we should STOP USING THEIR SERVICE!!
Edit: Thanks to Pinkaboo-Hime bringing to light something I missed, Square is somewhat international. "Card payment acceptance with the Square app is currently available in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom. We currently don’t support payment card processing outside of these countries or in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Northern Mariana Islands."
BONUS: Square is used more commonly than you think, if you've ever gone to a business and paid on an iPad then you've used it. They also own the personal fund app called Cash ($Cash app) is only for US residents the last I checked.. It's similar to PayPal's Venmo and is for personal transfers and you can't do business through it.
Square has so many features that make invoicing and selling easy. Way easier and more comfortable than PayPal and includes even more features that can tailor the service to fit your business. Please, please try it out in the future for your own sake, we don't need to be taking the risk of charge backs and other issues just because we use PayPal.
Square's integration with lots of other e-commerce services can benefit not only digital artists but are great for merch sales too!
Below is a test invoice to show you all how it looks from the seller's perspective. It's quite nice actually, much nicer than PayPal's. You can request tips, deposits, allow a customer to save their CC info for next time, and add an attachment of your TOS very easily.
Below this is the invoice from the buyer's perspective. When you click pay in the email you are redirected to a secure web page to actually process the payment.
There's even a referral program through Square! Just as a little incentive for artists out there I'll link mine.
If you wanna make an account as a seller, if you use that link you can get free payment processing! The free processing is up to $1000 and is good for 180 days.
Also that link can only be used by those in the US. Square doesn't yet support Cross-border free processing at this time.
If you have any questions I'll be happy to answer and if there's any other service that's an alternative to PayPal that's trustworthy feel free to reply here with it! Also if you've had any problems with PayPal please share your stories as well, let everyone be informed about the risk they're putting themselves in!
I don't know everything as I just started using this service so if anyone has information to correct me or to add about this service let me know as well!
EDIT: Payments accepted as of now are through debit/credit or via Google/Apple pay!
EDIT: If anyone using Stripe could give us more info on it that would be extremely helpful! As Square is not available in some countries!
Square is unfortunately still not available in my country... I was considering Stripe, but a lot of people from Brazil are not recommending it, since it's fairly new here, and people are having a lot of issues with it.
Does anyone know about TransferWise? It seems to be the best alternative for me, and it has lower fees than Paypal. I would really like to know if someone had some kind of good or bad experience with it.
Since this is a really informative thread and where a lot of good advice is collated regarding PayPal and alternative services, I just want to put down my experience with a random PayPal limitation on my account in case it might help someone else. Note that this only applies to US PayPal accounts as PayPal customer service in other countries will vary significantly.
I’ve used PayPal since 2012 on the same US-based account under my real name, verified at the time of creation with my government-issued ID and passport. I also have a bank account linked and a credit card linked (both are required though PayPal isn’t so clear on that and doesn’t often enforce it, but one bank account and one backup payment method that isn’t the same bank account’s debit card is actually a requirement for a longstanding PayPal account). For 8 years I’ve been buying and selling/receiving money through its system without a hitch. I’ve never experienced the limited account issue until recently, and it took about 20 minutes to resolve from my receiving the problem notice to receiving the resolution notice. I got lucky with the customer service representative, but I’ll go through the process in case it happens to anyone else.
1. I received an email from PayPal with the following message:
“We noticed that your PayPal account might be sharing information with other accounts having unresolved issues. To understand this better, we will require some information from you.”
It went on to say that I wouldn’t be able to receive money or withdraw money from my PayPal account and that I would need to log in to verify some information. Of course, never click links in e-mails, especially for financial e-mails. Always go to the site manually through your browser and log in to your account. There was, indeed, a limitation on my account and on clicking the appropriate notification tab and navigating to the issue in question, I was prompted to submit some identifying information. It provided a long list of potential documents to upload but I assume these were various options rather than a demand to upload all of them. (Among the options were identification documents like passport, drivers license, bank statements, credit card statements, etc..)
2. Before I did anything else, I submitted a scan of my drivers license per their instructions because, regardless of what I think is happening, I—as the user end—need to follow their procedures first (the drivers license option only required the front of the card, and I happened to have an image ready in a secure folder where I have various identification documents scanned and prepared for miscellaneous verification purposes both offline [printing] and online). I uploaded the image file through the appropriate submit button next to the correct option.
3. Then, I checked to make sure I was within operating hours and called PayPal. I didn’t just quick-Google the number (there’s apparently several), but used the “Contact Us” link in the introductory paragraph of that same verification page with the many options. This link took me to another page with various help options. I navigated around on that page until I found another “Contact Us” button at the bottom which should lead here after some selections of what your problem is: https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/contact-us
If you’re logged in to your account while navigating, there should be, at the bottom again, another option to “Call Us” and, on clicking that, you’ll be directed to a page with a one-time 6-digit code (however you get to this 6-digit code page, if you’re there, you’re in the right place to proceed with a call). This will streamline the identification process for the agent. Once you’re on the page that provides you with the one-time code, there should be a few options of numbers to dial. Even if you’re outside the US at the moment, if your account is a US PayPal account, I suggest using up some international minutes if your phone plan provides for it and just dialing the US number directly and not the international number. It’ll save you a few rounds of being on hold and such.
4. The automated system will then go through some basic messages and prompt you to input the 6-digit code if you have one. Then you can choose to be put on hold while you wait. I was on hold for about 2 minutes before an agent picked up. (I called around 10 AM Eastern Time; not sure if that was a particularly good time or anything, but it was a short wait.) He didn’t bother with anything but the basics about my name and PayPal account e-mail, since the one-time code already had my account pulled up for him. I explained what the problem was and the e-mail I had received. He did a quick check.
It turned out, it was a system error. There were several locked/restricted/suspicious accounts flagged that the system thought were related to my account. On a manual inspection, he said there was nothing linking them to me and did a cursory check by providing me the e-mails of the ‘related’ accounts to make sure I didn’t recognize them.
Once I confirmed they weren’t my accounts and had nothing to do with me, and he doubly verified this, he checked the identification document I had uploaded earlier and cleared my account immediately. The whole process of talking and checking took a little over 8 minutes and I hung up once pleasantries were exchanged. Given the speed at which he cleared the problem, I may have lucked out and reached a customer service representative a bit higher on the chain of authority than the usual ones who can only answer very basic questions as that’s all the information they’re provided.
5. The e-mail I then received within minutes of the call ending to notify me that my account was now cleared had nothing to do with the system error, but instead said:
”We reviewed the information you provided for Reference ID - [redacted] and have removed the limitation placed. You’ll now be able to access any feature that was limited before.”
So, officially, the reason it was lifted was because my drivers license reference was reviewed and cleared, not because the system just overzealously flagged everything in sight despite the agent confirming with me that the system might have been overcautious in its flagging of my account since there was nothing that tied my account to any of the other flagged ones on the list he could see.
So, long story short, it was a pretty quick and painless process if all procedures are followed as requested and there was genuinely nothing wrong with the account. This only applies for US PayPal accounts, however, so your experiences with PayPal phone/site support in other countries will vary wildly. Just know that the whole process of lifting the limitation in case of a genuine error on their part is rather mystified and, if I hadn’t called in, I really wouldn’t have known that it was an actual system error rather than my identification document just clearing.
In general, though, always try to call in after navigating to the closest possible problem you can find on their “Contact Us” page and getting that new one-time code they’re using to speed up the verification process. It will likely save you a lot of time being on hold as agents transfer you around to the appropriate departments if you call in from a general number.
I'm not checking the other 9 pages, but one of my best friends is a banker and Zelle was brought up in a chat we had yesterday.
What info I found out was this:
Have a US-based bank or credit union that is teamed up with it and sign up with either your email or phone number. You can wirelessly and with zero fees transfer money within minutes between accounts from your account. Apparently the only information shared is the name on your email.
Paypal honestly is the worst and SUCH a pain in the ass. The fact that they where so rude to you is SHOCKING. Like Damn, what the hell?
I'll definitely be checking out square tomorrow, as I really hate paypal and have been looking for an alternative.
Yo uh unfortunately I have to bring bad news for you.
I heard recently that PayPal had just opened their CryptoCurrency services, and I must say. This isn't a good idea, because CryptoCurrencies already have a bad reputation for causing negative impact on the environment, especially in light of the NFT/CryptoArt fiasco.
That being said, bitcoin isn't worth using at all.
I would like not to use PayPal, not even for this reason, but because of the huge commission. Sometimes I have to overpay such a huge amount ... For example, I have to pay 50 dollars, but since I pay in a different currency and also pay often in the "for friends" way so that everything can come to a person, instead of those 50 dollars, for example, I will spend all 80 dollars + - ...
I also live, for example, in Russia, and the service you specified is not available to me, as you understand. as in many other countries. Ehhh, if there was a really cool replacement for PayPal. For now, we will live like this.
/// And I'm sorry I'm sitting with a translator qwq