"Alternative ways to pay besides Paypal?" Topic

People, wondering what alternatives there are to Paypal to move money around.

I've no interest in Paypal deciding that I "made money" just because money moves around. Generally speaking, most of the payers have had no problem to send the money to a "friend or family" so there's no fees and it's not "income".

Still, is Venmo also deciding what is income and what is not?

What other alternatives are there? Perhaps a direct bank transfer? I've never had a bank ask my where money came from or why.

Obviously, there's an element of trust here between buyer and seller.

Any thoughts?

Perhaps I should go back to accepting personal checks – it delays things a bit while it clears, but there's rarely an urgent need for a gaming item anyway…

They had changed the friends and family rule, or were going to. But this may have changed with the new Congress and I know they were talking about changing the minimum upward from $600 USD, to a much more reasonable amount in the new Congress. Venmo worked the same as PayPal. The 600 dollar limit was passed during the previous congress. $600 USD was just too low.

If you search hard enough on the web, you can probably find the information. Good luck.

Venmo is almost exactly the same as PayPal, and is in fact owned by PayPal. Or something.

There's Bitcoin. For some reason everyone thinks of it as an investment, but when I first heard about it I assumed people would use it like they use PayPal – put money in, move it, take it out. Why would you leave it there? I can certainly understand not wanting to deal with it, but it might solve your problem.

I thought I saw a news bit about postponing or modifying the $600 USD rule.

Then there's gift cards.

I'm not sure how Zelle works when it's person-to-person.

Money orders still exist.

Hey, are we all culpable for conspiracy at this point?

In Europe we have SEPA.

I went back to old school money orders or checks, inconvienient though it might be. I use Paypal to order things when I can, though I don't take it for selling small stuff I want to get rid of.

I don't want to have to prove to the .gov how much I paid on an item from 15-20 years ago, or else pay tax on the entire price I sold it for. Way too much hassle.

In the military collectibles field, most dealers have stopped using paypal- many were blocked for not just selling, but "offering to sell" banned items such as knives. There are a great many horror stories of dealers who suddenly had their funds blocked for some silly reason, and then had a "fine" taken out of their blocked funds for violating some perceived rule. Curiously, often these fines seem to be the exact amount a person has in their paypal account.

Now granted, some of these gusy probably did violate the rules, but I can speak of more than a few I am sure did not. One in [particular took great pains not to accept paypal for anything questionable, like fighting knives. In his case some paypal employee went and looked at his website and saw such knives for sale- to include a warning that he could not take paypal for them- and banned him outright.

So there are a lot of people, and entire araes of commerce, that refuse paypal. There was a rumpor that Elon may do a twitter based pay system without such rules, but who knows.

PayPal may not charge you a fee for using "friends and family", but Bank of America credit card will treat it as a cash advance and charge fees. I believe PayPal includes a warning that this can occur.

In the USA, USPS Money Orders are as good as cash, though far more secure.

In the late 90's to the early 2000's, I started with USPS Money Orders as my only accepted payments, selling rules on the Web. When PayPal came out, I jumped on it, and it worked even better, as it could accept CC's, even though I never registered for it. They handled all of the CC stuff, I only knew that I received money, not how, or from what source. I mailed out my products to the user's registered address, and it worked superbly.

Today, I would not do that due to the $600 USD rule. The USPS Money Orders are not tracked by the IRS. You can deposit them into your bank account (likely tracked for the $600 USD limit), or you can cash them at the USPS Office nearest you.

The USPS does not track who cashes them, as far as I know. Cheers!

sounds like we are going back to checks, to me!

Whodathunkit?

Checks are tied to a bank account. Every check leaves a paper trail to be tracked. Use MO's and just deposit the cash when necessary, or keep it as pocket money.

Otherwise, learn about money laundering… LOL!!! Cheers!

This wouldn't be a problem if the Friends and Family limit was reasonable. I had a landlord who used Paypal to collect rent! It was well over the $600 USD proposed limit! That said I use Paypal all the time for online purchases, anecdotally I have not seen "entire areas of commerce" avoiding PP.

The problem is how to you sort out the flea market type of transaction from the retail business? I mean if you buy a historical knife or firearm from a dealer that cost you $5,000 USD that is certainly taxable income for him. If you buy that item from your friend who is not in the business of selling those items is that taxable income? Should PP as a business function as a mover of under the table transactions? Would that risk IRS scrutiny? Nothing new here just a different battleground in the tax wars.

The solution to the $600 USD limit is to write your Congress-critter to get the rule changed. I get the PP 3% fee, but tracking the net "profit" and reportable income is a PITA. PP reports gross receipts, and when I get PP G&S payments, there's no accounting for S&H charges … just a dumb rule… BTW, IRS and the last Congress are setting up all wait staff and restaurants to have all their receipts/tips reported to the IRS … leave them cash if they do a good job

I've always left them cash, seperate from the bill.

I also pay my plumber and such in cash, if possible.

I actually liked using Paypal, but they locked me out as I lost my old mobile and couldn't receive their security code when asked, so I have now no access to my account to update my details!!!

Nincompoops! their loss!