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Might PP end up like Liberty Reserve?
 

Had some funds lying in Liberty Reserve and got a shock when I opened the web page.

Busted by an assortment of USA enforcement agencies.

Has anyone lost funds or has anyone been contacted by authority's regarding alternative withdrawals?

Hope PP goes that way ( not that I wish for people to loose their money) as its an illegal monopoly as I see it to trade in Ebay that requires a PP acc.

From my side LR was funding illegal activities of money.

Paypal does not illegally do the same type of thing LR did.

Even though we all dislike pp they are not going anywhere.

They have yet to be proven guilty of doing anything wrong.

They have avoided the banking laws and can do almost anything they want because the banking regulations do not apply to them.

Hoping in the future they will but for now I use them and like all the money I am running through them without any problems.

PP will not go this way - dream of other things

If anything, Paypal will be "forced" to become a real bank and we won't be able to do any of this anymore.

But with the revenue they have, it's not too hard to lobby the right politicians to make sure that doesn't happen.

I wont get into the details but if they are forced to be a bank and be able to use those regulations against us you might as well pack your bags.

Careful what you wish for.

Funny thing is PP was lobbying to become a bank but was not accepted in North America at least.

Actually I like PayPal and more important so do my customers.

Being a member of this forum, everyone here should have the tools and education with the do's and don'ts concerning them.

Paypal and Liberty Reserve are nothing alike. Any product or service can potentially be used for illegal purposes. Paypal is used by criminals all the time but will never be shutdown by the US government. What causes government shutdowns of websites and other businesses is systematic encouragement of criminal activity and/or complete apathy towards criminal beneficiaries of its service or product.

Paypal has safeguards in place to prevent money laundering, tax evasion, scamming, and other criminal activities. It bans those that it determines to be participating in illegal activities and cooperates with law enforcement and the IRS. Liberty Reserve on the other hand, made the majority of its money off of these criminals. Its anonymity and untraceable nature created a safe haven for nefarious characters and encouraged the participation of criminal enterprises in its service.

A closer comparison to Liberty Reserve would be Megaupload.com. Paypal by comparison is the uptight law-abiding-citizen.

PayPal is probably used legitimately 95% of the time or more, with 5% or less of their transactions involving criminal activity. Liberty Reserve was probably used for criminal activity 95% of the time, with 5% being legitimate.

The government is NOT likely to go after PayPal. But, at some point, they MIGHT force PayPal to either become a bank, or abide by the exact same rules as a bank. And we do NOT want that to happen. Luckily, neither does PayPal and they have GREAT lobbyists and lots of money.

PayPal is eBay's growth engine right now - more and more of their profits come from PayPal. There is no way they will not fight like hell to keep the status quo.

FutureMogul888's mention of MegaUpload.com was right on. They were well known for hosting a ton of dodgy material in their storage lockers. Compare that to Amazon's storage service. The government will never shut down Amazon's lockers unless they had evidence that Amazon was willingly allowing copyright infringement to occur, and that would be highly doubtful.

It would also be like comparing eBay to the Silk Road website on the TOR network (SR is primarily used to facilitate drug sales). If the US government found a couple of drug sales taking place on eBay, they would probably advise eBay of the situation, but not shut them down. Silk Road, on the other hand, is a HUGE TARGET for the government right now and will probably be shut down at some point.

Anything can potentially be used for criminal activity. But when a business exploits that, or simply looks the other way, then they invite all kinds of scrutiny. It actually surprises me that it took them as long as it did to go after Liberty Reserve.

We all dislike them for what they do without any explanation etc. I did not mean customers or anything else other then how they do certain things.

I posted this above:

Hoping in the future they will but for now I use them and like all the money I am running through them without any problems.

Be careful of what you wish to have happen.

Better the devil you know than the devil you do not know.

Always keep in mind this forum gives the best insight into using paypal for our own business.

Really hard to train a new dog

:juggle:

Very solid statement - the comprehension level to operate PP flawlessly :) or with minimum blips

Totally agree with GreenBean here. Of course, PayPal is not very seller-friendly and we all love to hate them. But major changes are always potentially dangerous.

For as evil as ebay and paypal get portrayed here, I hope they never change. We have it very good now. No SSN requirements, no real id verification.

PP and EB could be much much worse, regardless of the troubles they can provide, with the right knowledge, you can make a lot of money.

Cant put all your eggs in 1 basket so stop relying on paypal so much this goes for everybody.