alt Hacker NewsThey are probably testing stolen/hacked PayPal accounts. Probably doing a dispute to ensure the owners don’t suspect anything is going wrong, until they use it for bigger transactions. Unfortunately with PayPal there’s no way to ascertain ownership of an account (like 3DS).
This used to happen to us, eventually after haggling with PayPay support for over a year on who should bear the cost, we just shut down PayPal payments. Don’t have anything better to offer, sorry.
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My immediate reaction reading the post was “don’t use PayPal”
Online marketplaces, multiparty sellers, credit card transactions, etc… are hard enough as it is
Don’t become dependent on a vendor who’s absolutely terrible to work with
Are there services that "guarantee" (or block) transactions for a fee?
In any case, this should be the primary responsibility of the payment service !! The fact it can so casually off load it to the merchants is just bizarre
> there’s no way to ascertain ownership of an account (like 3DS)
3DS is 2FA and PayPal most definitely has it, it's just that they protect the customer regardless of 2FA.
What have you switched to that isn't PayPal and also doesn't have this issue?
I haven't worked with online payments for a few years, so take it for what it is, but I'd agree. PayPal is possibly the worst payment solution, for the stores. Their support sucks and is completely unhelpful, managing your account was at the time extremely complex, compared any other payment solution.
Our rule taking PayPal: Transfer EVERYTHING out of your PayPal account on a daily basis, do not let them hold your funds, they will block you from accessing it at some point. Minimize what they can touch.
Also don't all smaller amounts to be paid with PayPal. This prevents you from being abused as a source for verifying stolen accounts.
The only company I dealt with that came close to the same level of incompetency was Klarna. Klarna didn't at the time understand the concept of fraud, because they're Swedish and their system in Sweden MOSTLY prevented fraud at the time. Once people found away around that and Klarna expanded beyond Sweden, they gave up and attempted to stick the bill on us, despite their contracts clearly stated that they where responsible for collecting payments.