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eBay/PayPal Talk About Holds, Interest Earned
 

eBay/PayPal today posted some information on their blog about PayPal holds. AuctioBytes has an interesting take on it here:

eBay Attempts to Explain PayPal Holds and Floats

There is nothing really new regarding the holds, but PayPal insists they do NOT earn any interest on the money they hold, and in fact are now holding PayPal Customer Funds in a non-interest bearing account so there is no confusion.

AuctionBytes is wondering if this is happening because government regulators are starting to look into their business practices....

That would also be my guess. There has been a LOT of publicity about this of late, on sites like MarketWatch and in magazines such as Time and Forbes. So, it is no longer just a few disgrunted bloggers beating this drum. When mainstream media starts covering a problem, it is much harder for the government to ignore.

this is from a blog post from a link inside the article jeff posted.

of all the account i have ever held, the onle ones that have NOT earned interest are accounts where the minimum daily balance was below $200. i HIGHLY doubt that ebay has tens of millions of accounts opened that only have $199 in them as o avoid earning interest.

another one... more like, "this was never intended to be found out by the public as a source of income for us."

here is the link to that post http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/yo...ming.html?_r=1

there we are then

htese articles only address the 21 day holds tho. what about the 180 day holds that there really isnt any reason to hold 100% of the funds that long?

both the 21 and 180 day hold are bogus. If you want to protect the buyers then sure put more restrictions on the money but if you want to protect the seller then they will have to put up a little risk right. :rolleyes:

I think that goverment regulation of PayPal is inevitable. It is a matter of WHEN, not IF.

However, be careful what you wish for. Whatever the government comes up with, along with PayPal's responses, could easily end up being worse for sellers. A few years from now, we could be calling 2012 the "good old days" of PayPal.

Meh, it sounds scarier than it is. I already have to report everything that I own so I don't really see the harm. The 180 day helds mean NOTHING to buyers. I've never seen that held in person but I've heard so many horror stories to know that it can happen.

Also, how does holding someone's money for 180 days keep things secure? What's going on for those 180 days?

Oh and to the other poster that mentioned non-interest banks. EXACTLY! Every savings I've ever seen gave you interest...no matter how small. So that's a bunch of bull right there.

I read that letter that was being posted and I love that wording how it couldn't be further from the truth that Paypal was holding funds to earn interest. But then he goes on to say that yes they are earning interest but it's just not very much. lol. Yeah, ok whatever man.

the thing is they say "modest interest accounts", but whats "modest" to a billion dollar company!!! lol sounds like 3/4 the politicians ive heard make a speech