Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 10:50:12 -0800 From: Jeff Lasman <jblists@nobaloney.net> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Confirm Your PayPal Membership Message-ID: <3C30B364.61C394A0@nobaloney.net> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20011231011757.01d72730@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20011226145226.021974b0@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20011227092550.01c87ae0@localhost> <3C2FCA60.99829AA7@mindspring.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20011231011757.01d72730@localhost> <4.3.2.7.2.20011231014644.00e7af00@localhost>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Brett Glass wrote: > A Ponzi scheme is a bit different in that it claims to be > an investment. PayPal doesn't claim to give users a gain on > their money. PayPal does offer a "money-market" return on money. I've never been willing to join the "money-market", as it doesn't really give what I consider to be a good return for the perceived increased risk. The money-market account is handled by an outside investment firm, and the signup form comes with complete disclosure as required by U.S. law. It was after I read the disclosure that I decided not to sign up for it. There are several ways to get money out of the PayPal account. One is to do manual money-transfers; I've never had one take less than four days. Another is to set up automatic sweeps; I've done that as well. All your collected PayPal funds are transferred nightly (probably only during banking days) to the bank account. Those transfers may take as long as four days as well. Yet another way is to use the PayPal card; it's a MasterCard and it does NOT say "debit card" on it; in fact I've used it successfully for automobile rentals; something that's very hard to do with "debit cards". I have no idea what Anthony's problem is with PayPal, and I'm not belittling it in any way, but I'm sure there's at least a perceived reason on PayPal's part as to why they're holding the money on his account. I hope he gets it resolved soon, and lets us know the resolution. For what it's worth, PayPal got an investment (read: cash infusion) either early 2001 or perhaps late 2000, from Providian Financial; a major credit-card bank. They also offer a real PayPal credit card, presumably through their relationship with Providian. They started as a free service to individuals, they've done a lot to change their plan to make money. Though my own personal exposure is NOT great (generally under us$1000) I hope they stay around for a long time just for the convenience. That said, I just had an "international" customer (in Australia) not be able to use it to send me money until he got the "numbers" off his credit card statement <frown>; I am looking for another option for international customers, but I don't take in enough money from international customers by credit-card to make a merchant account a cost-effective option. > But they likely have high overhead (due to the > costs of employee salaries, bandwidth, fraud, fees paid > to creit card companies, etc.) and could well spend > substantially more than they can make on float. They also collect fees from their business customers; often about the same as aggressive contracts that good-credit companies can negotiate directly with merchant banks, so if they can't make it, then can any merchant bank? Or in other words, are their expenses that much more than (for example) authorize.net? > My suspicion > is that their liabilities exceed their assets as a result on > this, and that they could therefore not sustain a run. No bank can sustain a "run", Brett. I hope you'll eventually concede that <smile>. That said, about ten years ago I was Senior Analyst at the U.S.'s largest privately owned mortgage bank. We regularly borrowed millions of dollars from Bank of America. There was never a day on which we could have paid it back. And since we borrowed it "float" loans that hadn't been approved yet, it wasn't backed by what the banking industry calls "paper". The bank was sold to Norwest after the founder died and the surviving family didn't want to keep running it; they got a lot of money out of the deal, and even funded/endowed the "Anderson School of Business" at the University of California. There was never any insolvency, even though at one time we had 2,000 employees processing mortgage loans and spent over us$1,000,000 a year on software licenses. And there really isn't a lot of money made on individual loans either. Norwest eventually bought Wells Fargo and changed their name to Wells Fargo, but the office here still employs somewhere in the neighborhood of 500. I'd guess they don't borrow millions of dollars a day from Bank of America anymore <wry grin>. Jeff -- Jeff Lasman <jblists@nobaloney.net> Linux and Cobalt/Sun/RaQ Consulting nobaloney.net P. O. Box 52672, Riverside, CA 92517 voice: (909) 778-9980 * fax: (702) 548-9484 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3C30B364.61C394A0>