I don’t use PayPal as much as I used to – maybe a couple times a month – but I noticed something earlier this year that struck me as odd. Every time I logged into my PayPal account, rather than taking me to my home screen showing my balance and transactions, PayPal would show me a page promoting their credit card, or promoting their “pay later” service.
Recently, in this holiday season of buy-buy-buy, I used PayPal a couple of times and in every instance the default was “Pay After Delivery” and it was set to withdraw money from my bank account. You have to dig a layer down to find what should be the logical default: PayPal Balance.
PayPal has been spun off from eBay, and there’s clearly maneuvering afoot to re-invent PayPal as more than just a digital payment tool. They want to finance your purchase, and touch your bank account more often – they don’t want to be an isolated island like many of us (myself included) use them.
We have enough credit cards companies in the world destroying the financial lives of average people – we don’t need more of them. PayPal shouldn’t be going down this road…
Paypal actually roped me on this… I thought I was paying with my bank account funding, but I was paying with credit. Then I got a bill, $400+ balance and I didn’t even know. That was a while back though. Wait, when was this even posted by Jason? Ok. recent. Ya… it was months and months ago when I discovered this.
Yeah, they’ve been doing it for a while now – I just got around to writing about it because I was tired of seeing it…