seems like basically every artist makes a point of exclusively using paypal
what a shame since paypal is evil incarnate and i want it to die a gruesome and lonely death
dwolla and square cash are neat, and the latter is basically zero setup, but alas they both only work in the US
i guess there’s always bitcoin
square is cool but last time i tried to set one up i accidentally used the wrong last name and it couldn’t tie the account to my SSN; the result was me permanently being disallowed from taking credit cards
guess i can’t make a new square account until i change my name, my SSN reflects my new name exactly, and i get a new email address
i get paypal’s shitty but it’s also way more a usability thing
- it works internationally
- doesnt involve conversion of an insecure, wildly-fluctuating crypto-currency
- works with a lot of online retailers if for some reason you don’t want to move the money to your checking account
- anyone who’s ever used a mundane retail service like ebay or etsy likely already has a paypal account to match
and like. it’d be great if there were viable alternatives! but of the 3 listed two only work in the US and one is a hassle and a risk. not the greatest things in the world.
haha bitcoin was tongue-in-cheek don’t worry
“everyone already has one” is somewhat mitigated by square cash, where you literally just send an email to someone with a subject of like “$400”. if you’ve never used it before then you’ll get a followup email asking for a debit card number. and then you’re done, and in my experience the money moves within an hour. i don’t know how this works but it’s fucking amazing and is how all money transfer ought to be.
(ps cubey: square cash is separate from square, so maybe that would still work for you. i’m amazed you could never get that fixed, though, like that is really uncool of them. yell at them on twitter??? seems to work for me B))
but yes, only works in the US. like all startups. hell, it doesn’t even work in the entire US; last i saw you couldn’t use it in hawaii or kentucky, for reasons i’m sure are hilarious and terrible.
dwolla has a neat thing going but they have the same three-day initial setup window as paypal (hey we sent you two tiny payments, wait for a week and then tell us what they were) which is probably why i am the only person i’ve ever met with a dwolla account. but payments under $10 are free, absolutely any other amount is a flat 25¢, and they’re working on making dwolla-to-bank transfers instant rather than three-day affairs.
but i and the people around me have been burned by paypal way too many times. porn, arbitrary locks when they feel like it, terrible cs, the usual. the last fucking straw was when i was trying to buy styx, and i was way out in the middle of fucking nowhere, and i had to log into my paypal account but couldn’t remember my password right away (because i don’t know any of my passwords) and it decided my account needed to be locked right there and then and demanded i call from a landline to unlock it. i don’t own a fucking landline so i had to irc and ask someone else to call them and get the unlock code, meaning they didn’t actually care who called them as long as it wasn’t a cell, meaning it was all a colossal fucking joke they put in just so i’d feel like i was doing security things. i had to dick around with this for a fucking hour at the breeder’s. i closed my account that day.
if i absolutely need to paypal someone i just ask em to send me an invoice, and then i can pay via credit card without needing a paypal account. (so i get to see all the ways paypal tries to trick me into signing up for one again, like a reminder email some time ago that i “forgot to finish setting up my account”.) but that’s a hassle for all involved so more often i just don’t buy paypal-only things.