What I think is happening - A heads up on best practices

[Omgoozle]

I just wanted to make a short thread about what I think is going on with the latest PP changes.

IMHO, PP has decided to catch-up to the rest of the financial world when it comes to double and triple ID verification before allowing payment proccessing.

Many of the changes PP's made recently have been in place by banking institutions for years. It is not unusual for me (or anyone) to receive a text verification request before completing actions on my web-based bank accounts.

Despite their rhetoric, PP is not an industry leader in security. The existence of these forums prove that. They are an industry follower.

As Alibaba enters the US market and PP separates itself from its parent company, we can probably expect more changes in the future. To give you an idea of what more is possible, I can tell you from experience that Alipay's ID verification system has the prospective seller take a picture of them holding their ID, like so:


...with all the text legible.


So hopefully we won't have to do that for the next several years. But in general, if you want to start preparing for the next big stealth changes you should start looking at global id-verifying best practices and realize that the US is far behind the rest of the world when it comes to this topic.



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[yankee]

Yikes!

I was thinking that paypal just likes to make money on my money so they came up with a bunch of new experimental ways to keep it 7+ days longer.

I have not deal with the txt situation yet.

[Omgoozle]

I believe double and triple ID verification is the root cause of most of the threads on the first page of these forums, so I'd count yourself lucky if you haven't had to deal with this cluster-f yet. Their new text-verify campaign is a doozy.

http://www.aspkin.com/forums/subscri...yment-wth.html

http://www.aspkin.com/forums/subscri...-computer.html

http://www.aspkin.com/forums/subscri...tion-text.html

http://www.aspkin.com/forums/subscri...tion-wise.html

http://www.aspkin.com/forums/subscri...ey-linked.html

[yankee]

I have not hardly withdrew any funds. Only enough to cover Endicia and Stamps from just one single account.

I will be spending most of my funds next week(or whenever paypal decides they no longer want to play with my money)

I have a new one now too. Instant payment, gets "You Got Money" hold 20 minutes later, print a fedex label not thinking that it will draw my account negative because of the "Pay later" option BUT on the ebay side it is a free and clear payment.

I have no idea what happens. It shows nothing in paypal. I have a receipt saying I purchased shipping and can dispute it with paypal against ebay for the next 180 days.
It was not withdraw from a bank account and it did not kick the VBA also attached.

So weird.

[Sooner]

Originally Posted by yankee

I have not hardly withdrew any funds. Only enough to cover Endicia and Stamps from just one single account.

I use Stamps.com and have previously used Endicia. I used Endicia for several years when I used a Mac Mini computer and switched back to Stamps.com after I purchased a new HP desktop computer. Just curious ~ why do you use both of these services?

[yankee]

Originally Posted by Sooner

I use Stamps.com and have previously used Endicia. I used Endicia for several years when I used a Mac Mini computer and switched back to Stamps.com after I purchased a new HP desktop computer. Just curious ~ why do you use both of these services?

Locations(I have many), what was already on a PC and quite frankly, I had a big balance in stamps to use up and gone from playing around to being exceedingly busy(although still playing around and testing experimenting)
Next week as my home office becomes more efficient with new furniture, Macs, ZP500 printers everything will run through endicia and Fedex online.

I require all my warehouses and sellers to use Endicia and Fedex online and my home office should be the same way until something better comes along.

[Salvo]

Voice Verification will become much more mainstream as well... unique voiceprints in standard accessible databases. Could link very fast!
3 Banks Using Voice Biometrics for Security and Authentication

BIG REASON I do not want to ever call pp. eb I'm not so worried yet, as those are mostly intro to selling calls. pp has more at stake because they are the actual processor.

[Ebayorbust]

So hopefully we won't have to do that for the next several years.

You should have a read of the changes to the Paypal legal agreement. The type of ID verification you are referring to is potentially a lot closer than you think.

[jeffweico]

PayPal and every other financial institution on earth is constantly improving their security procedures. I still say it is not time to panic just yet.

One thing is certain. If these ID checks become implemented across all PayPal accounts, they may not be so quick to get rid of sellers. And that would be a good thing. Because as much as eBay and PayPal value buyers more than the sellers, at the end of the day, they still need sellers. But maybe I'm wrong, who knows?

I'm glad that I have my own website and that it is doing well. I increase my business there a little bit each month and currently have between $6k and $7k in sales in the average month. Hopefully, if they implement these changes, I will have over $10k in sales per month at my site.

But even if that is not the case, there are many other avenues for getting business on the web. Most of them ARE more work than just placing a listing on eBay, but you CAN make sales without eBay and Amazon. It is just that eBay and Amazon are good sales platforms. I will continue to use them until I am no longer able to do so. But I still don't think that will happen.

There are also affiliate programs, Google Adwords, Bing & Yahoo ads, and tons of PPC services and shopping comparison engines. I long ago realized that eBay was NOT the only game in town and started using some of these other services.

If you are in this for the short-term, a college student trying to earn some money to get through school or just temporarily using eBay to supplement your income, then you don't have to worry so much. It will be around for awhile. But if you are in this for the long term, you might want to start testing other avenues of selling online.

Also, if your business methods involve selling cheap, crappy merchandise that continually gets you banned, or counterfeits, or commodity products where there are always ten more sellers with lower prices, then you might want to reconsider the way you are operating. Because those markets will become more and more difficult as time goes on.

Again, however, don't panic. PayPal, eBay and Amazon have had the ability to stop stealth dead in its tracks for YEARS NOW, but they have not done so. Why? Because every time they make changes that tighten security, they lose a certain percentage of their business. Corporations are very careful not to let that type of thing get out of hand. The credit card industry is a perfect example of that. In Europe, credit cards have had microchips implanted in them for several years now, making them much more difficult to steal and counterfeit. But the US has no such system yet. Why? Because it is cheaper for the credit card companies to take certain losses due to fraud than it would be to roll out a whole new system where they have to replace equipment and - more importantly - educate people how to use them. People are resistant to change. So changes could mean lost business.

PayPal is not going to become just another credit card issuer, their whole premise is ease of use and a system that is open to all. And if they lose that, they are just another credit card issuer. So, yes, things will tighten over the years, but it won't happen by June.

So, do the smart thing. Continue with stealth and use eBay and Amazon as long as you can. But also start looking into other ways to get business online. Because if you don't, then one day you WILL find yourself frozen out of online selling.

[rsot]

Thanks for bringing the posts together Omgoozle - puts it into perspective