About 3 or 4 years ago PayPal added the option to buy cryptocurrency, which I thought I’d try. (Dumb idea 🙄)
Part of the sign up process was glitched. I retried and clicked submit one too many times, I guess. Now I’ve been unable to use PayPal for years. They blocked me because THEIR SITE was broken, but the web page essentially accuses me of being a criminal and asks for my bank records. No way in hell.
This was just for me to pay others. I can only imagine how awful PayPal is if you are a vendor.
Fuck PayPal.
Because it’s convenient for paying online (one login instead of having to search my debit card and also, if I got scammed, there’d be another layer of protection for me) and it’s convenient for sending money to friends when we order pizza together or sth like that. What’s the alternative?
Venmo, Google pay, apple pay
No one I know has venmo. Most people I know wouldn’t even know what venmo is. I’m not even sure it’s available here in Europe. I believe it actually isn’t, can’t find it on the AppStore.
And Google pay and Apple pay are nice and I personally use them but I’m not always on a device that supports them, I’m not always on shops that support them and I know a lot of people who don’t have credit/debit cards, only giro cards, and those usually aren’t supported either. And, at least in Europe, you cannot send money to friends via Apple Pay or Google pay.
In EU, you need to use PayPal at all.bank transferes are instant, banks provide disponible debit cards , you can use Google pay Almost anywhere, which keeps your Privacy. Where is that you NEED to use PayPal in EU?
Instant bank transfers cost me 49ct each and for most people I know it’s similar. PayPal is free. And I already use Apple pay, why would I use Google pay on top?
Does you bank have an option to send money for free? Mine does l. You just download their virtual wallet app and you can send instant transfers for free from that app to anyone that uses the same service. And most banks here offer it. They call it FLIK and it is really convenient.
I can send money for free but only within 2-3 business days or to accounts at the same bank. Instant transfer to different banks costs 49ct
Ah that kinda sucks
Time to switch banks?
That’s not uncommon here, though, unless you pay for your bank account.
Revolut, n26 try any bank whicubisbgood in online or the BIGGER names mostly has instant transfer, in my experience its the middle of road banks that are taking time .
I use PayPal for their dispute feature. Bank transfers using ideal are usually final, while PayPal will charge back most of the time until the dispute is resolved. It gives you a much better position as a consumer to deal with shady companies.
Where I am from everyone used Venmo… I never wanted it, I had PayPal forever due to ebay I think in the 2000’s so why did I need another service that did the exact same thing as PayPal and it’s even owned by the same company! Sadly, I lost that battle and caved. Idk why everyone said let’s use venmo or why it got big, but I’m stuck out of convenience for others now.
Personally, I love Zelle the most since it’s a direct transfer from bank account to bank account and available immediately without the 2 day wait like the other services.
Monero
So, crypto?
Absolutely. It is absolutely the future of finance.
And Twitter is absolutely the future of social media!
See, we can all post statements that are clearly detached from reality and entirely incorrect.
I know one person who owns crypto, no shops that take it and I know of too many people who speculate with it. If it is the future of finance, that future is still fairly far away.
Well now you know two people who use crypto and I use it as money. I don’t speculate on it. I buy my groceries and pay my cell phone bill and pay my insurance with it. I recently bought a Taylor Swift album with it as well.
I don’t think I could buy my groceries with crypto if I wanted to. What supermarket takes crypto? My phone provider wouldn’t either and my insurance is deducted directly from my paycheque because that’s just how it works here.
And how often do you end up paying more on real money due to the delay in transactions or awful gas fees for your transaction?
Crypto being a common currency is about as likely as Gary Johnson winning the presidential election. The average person is going to take up crypto as much as they use Tor. Both have their uses, but neither one will ever be mainstream.
Venmo is owned by PayPal, so that might not solve anything
All data sucking big corporate leeches. I wish giropay would take off more
Ever heard about chargeback? Credit card is supreme in terms of protection against scams.
Bitcoin? Ether?
Really? Crypto? For one, I know almost no online shop that takes crypto, almost no person I’d send money to has crypto and I don’t want to own crypto either since it’s rather unstable…
This doesn’t solve the adoption issue, but you can use “stable coins” like DAI that are pegged to the dollar.
Sounds like an addoption problem for you. The question asked what other alternative there is and cryptocurrencies solve the problem you stated there is no alternative to. Simple as that
They don’t. They could maybe. But I want an easy solution to transfer money to people and pay online. Crypto is not that solution because I cannot pay with it in most online shops and I cannot send money directly to other people. The money has to be exchanged to some arbitrary other currency.
Unless everybody used crypto as their main currency and everybody used the same cryptocurrency at that, it’ll always be an extra step, subject to fluctuations in exchange rate and possibly fees/taxes. As long as that’s not the case, it’s not an alternative. So yes, it’s an adoption problem but one that isn’t realistically solvable any time soon
Price Crypto at the one-year simple moving average, and the volatility stops. I personally use crypto all the time and make my budget using the one-year simple moving average and it completely eliminates the issue with the volatility because that average takes a very long time to move.
Cool, let’s say your average per year is a value of 50?
Meanwhile in the real world; apple costs 1 in january and 100 in december.
But yeah bro that yearly average.
You crypto bros are like a cult.
Better than back when they were saying we’d all be paying for our groceries with Bitcoin in a few years. And every time I pointed out that I wanted my milk to be the same price today as it was yesterday and tomorrow, they got mad.
You have a nice day too.
What? No it doesn’t, you’re just shifting the volatility from your pricing to your consumption.
And that’s fine because you will always buy your requirements such as food, water, shelter, and transportation no matter what the price is. But you don’t need that new Xbox right now. It keeps prices steady, which is what people expect from a currency. And the more people who do it this way, the lower the volatility will become because more people are using it.
The elasticity of demand is not static.
Still, I don’t know any non-shady online shop that takes crypto.
Maybe for you, but there are large parts of the world that are relying on crypto such as the African region which for them has been a game changer as an alternative to their unstable currencies.
That is legitimately great. Doesn’t make it a good or even viable PayPal alternative for me, a European, though. Or even a viable alternative for the Euro.
Gratuitas.org sells premium grade coffee for Monero. You can also look at monerica.com. There are absolutely tons of legitimate businesses that accept crypto. Actually, when it comes right down to it, it makes a whole lot of sense to accept crypto because the transaction fees are so damn low that businesses save a ton of money over credit card transactions.
But why should I base my shopping habits around a currency/platform when I could just use one that almost everyone takes. When I want to order off a random online shop, I do not want to think about whether they’ll even take the money I have.
Fair enough, I’ll be the first to admit that it takes work in order to use it. I’ll give two reasons. One is a monetary, and one is not.
Reason 1: If we are right, and 15 years of data shows we at least have a point, then you would be an early adopter and very likely end up very wealthy.
Reason 2: You can buy anything from anyone, anywhere, in the world at any time without permission. And it’s guaranteed to be irreversible in 20 minutes.
How is that a good thing? I want to be able to chargeback if I don’t get what I ordered.
So it is speculative.
And should I feel the need to buy something from somewhere I need permission for, I will consider getting some crypto. Haven’t had a situation yet where cash didn’t suffice though.