Ask HN: Has anyone noticed an increase in payments failure through PayPal

by poutinepapion 10/2/2023, 11:49 PMwith 15 comments

Pretty much what it says on the tin, more and more often Paypal hangs on me, quits, etc...

I'm in the middle of moving some money around and seriously considering just taking out the cash and paying a mate to transport it.

I've also noticed some weird peaks on other bank systems, all in different places: Panama, Switzerland, South Africa, and Japan.

My question is the following: Have you noticed anything? Extra traffic? Longer wait times? More failed anything? How about credit cards? Any failed transactions?

And well, I'm an engineer, I want to know why, actually I want to know if something IS actually happening or if it's just because I'm very active user and therefore more in contact with.

Cheers, keep your rifles oiled.

Slava Ukraini! Heroyam Slava!

by bensonnon 10/3/2023, 5:41 AM

I had a recent experience with Venmo, owned by Paypal. Not sure if it is related but it was very frustrating.

I thought I already had Venmo so when I customer asked I said yes. Turns out I had a Zelle account. So I quickly set up Venmo. They did a business and personal account by default. I went through all the steps and Venmo said everything was working and ready.

The customer transferred me the money and boom, my account was frozen for "violating the ToS", no more explanation. They transferred money to an account Venmo said was fine. Transferring money IS their business so I thought it weird that this violated their ToS. Also weird that nothing violated the ToS until they had my money.

There is no phone number to call. Chat doesn't help.

by toomuchtodoon 10/3/2023, 1:11 AM

Can’t speak to PayPal, but my transfers between TransferWise and Chase are instant now vs failures or slowdowns. Highly recommend Wise if you can.

by RagnarDon 10/3/2023, 7:02 AM

I shut down my PayPal account after many years because of their increasingly questionable business practices and apparent general software incompetence.

I strongly advise not carrying around lots of cash, especially within the U.S. Legal or not, you'll be an automatic target of Civil Asset Forfeiture from corrupt police. A lot of people use Amazon gift cards. There's also always crypto.

by weatherlighton 10/3/2023, 1:08 AM

I tried to buy something from Steam yesterday and it hung for a while, a gave up and tried again today. May be unrelated.

by ThePowerOfFueton 10/3/2023, 1:39 PM

Paying someone to transport cash? If you're running drugs and guns, sure. Otherwise, www.wise.com.

by threeseventhson 10/3/2023, 2:02 PM

Anecdotally, after a fresh pi-hole deployment, I am having trouble with PayPal loading on American sites. I am from Canada. It’s not just one platform such as Shopify but it seems to be PayPal itself because the popup window is the one that hangs.

by Giorgion 10/3/2023, 6:45 AM

Yeah, it stopped accepting subscriptions and refuses to validate card I used to use for a years.

by str3weron 10/3/2023, 4:10 AM

they have very high amounts of fraud going on so they made their antifraud crazy strict and it makes more false positives than actual detections