ProPay vs PayPal

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Yesterday I got what I consider a spam comment from Brandon at ProPay. According to my posted spam policy I have deleted and reposted the comment, minus link. For future reference Brandon, hiding your Blogger profile and failing to leave contact information gives you and ProPay serious credibility problems with me.

ProPay as you may know is the beard (One who serves to divert suspicion or attention from another - American Heritage Dictionary) eBay suits have donned in hopes of avoiding lawsuits or deflecting charges of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, Sec.5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, and Sec.7 of the Clayton Act which regulates exclusive dealing contracts, tying agreements, or requirement contracts.

Brandon wants you to know

"Right now we only offer a merchant account but at the end of September we will be announcing a new special account for our eBay customers. ProPay will charge a small yearly fee, but will provide several services and we will help our customers fight against fraud."

Isn't that nice?

I am sure that eBay has non standard merchant processing requirements for ProPay to fulfill in order to be allowed on eBay. Sellers will be told what ProPay has to offer on eBay right at the start of holiday shopping season. Would I use an untried payment processor at that time of year? In one word, no. Exactly what PayPal wants.

I do not believe at the present time ProPay is competitive with PayPal for smaller sellers. For web stores ProPay expects the seller to manually input the credit card information, this incurs a security burden I would be unwilling to assume. Further it would discourage my buying from any site using ProPay.

According to the ProPay EFT Agreement a merchant agrees;

As part of this agreement, you irrevocably authorize ProPay to debit your Checking Account for any fees, payments or penalties you owe or may owe ProPay relating to ACH or Intra-ProPay transactions. You authorize ProPay to initiate reversal or adjustment entries and initiate or suspend such entries as may be necessary to grant you conditional credit for any entry.

Gosh & WOW! That sounds worse than PayPal!


The company seems confused as to exactly what charges apply to the various levels of service. On this page Premium is shown as having an annual fee of $29.95 with 3.25% + 35c per transaction and processing limits of $500 per transaction and $3000 per month. Earlier this morning Premium was $59.95 per annum and Basic was 34.95.

I was unable to find any reference to international transactions and four telephone calls to the PR department during the course of the business day netted me voicemail. Here is a little quick comparison chart.

Once again eBay is comparing bananas to pineapples, just because they are both yellow they hope you won't notice. Looks more like a lemon to me.

Y'all come back!




Related articles:

Yes we have no bananas!

eBay PayPal Only Policy

This post was written in August 2008. Information may be out of date.
Red Ink Diary has moved lock stock and barrel (including this post) to HERE where you can read the latest eCommerce, Bonanzle, PayPal and eBay news.


It is hard to pick a single subject when it comes to writing about eBay, they have outraged so many of their customers they may well be the most hated corporation in the USA. It is very hard to remain objective about anything when it affects the way you earn your living. It is hardest of all to change the way you do business after years of learning that 'this' is the way it is done; but change we must if we are to survive as sellers with or without eBay.

eBay has asserted there is no PayPal Only in the USA policy. The reason for this is that we have laws preventing it. There may be no such official policy at eBay but we have now reached a point where there is a de facto policy, and this is open contempt of the law.

Here is a link to the relevant eBay page.

All new sellers must offer PayPal as a payment option.

I received this document last night from a colleague. I urge you to read, cut and paste anything that reflects your opinion and then forward a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission and to the Attorney General of the state in which you live and do business.

I would like to point out that I do not personally have a problem accepting any kind of payment, even PayPal. I am infuriated by eBay's open contempt both for the law of the land and their customers. It is a corporate disease and the only cure for that disease is legal action. I realize that almost nobody has both the desire and the financial means to take eBay to court but what you can do is make noise. Look at the example of what the Australian sellers accomplished, eBay backed down but is trying the same back door policy there as they are using here, clearly expressed in the Discouraging Payments Policy.

You have three choices. Accept everything eBay does to you, quit or fight back.
What will your choice be?

Y'all come back!