Posts by RobF

Second Hand Background is Wrong

It's a decent article as X.commerce has been too broadly and vaguely positioned, but the whole PayPal crisis theme is nonsense and based on an article of the same basis on Pando Daily that itself was based on an interview with Elon Musk, a PayPal founder, that was sensationalised under a "PayPal is screwed" title!

Putting aside the chinese whispers of this type of report, it seems to me Musk was actually trying to emphasise evolvement of simple online payment solutions by firms like Stripe in the area of PayPal's core business. But: Musk is now a major investor in Stripe so the source argument here was never going to be objective.

Stripe is neat but it's just a hugely simplified version of PayPal. There is no technology innovation here. It's just a lean product. PayPal is never going to be Stripe because it would need to cut away functionality and value add. Stripe on the other hand might one day be PayPal, because broader product = more revenue.

If you go back to the "source article" the other theme is Braintree, an undoubtedly innovative and cutting edge Merchant payment services provider. But Braintree and PayPal are no more alike than Stripe and PayPal are. Braintree is a full service Merchant-oriented solution, PayPal is a user/customer-first payment wallet.

PayPal has never really tried to play in the Merchant space that Braintree is transforming (and even PayPal's "Large Merchant" re-entrance the past few years is as a wallet alongside card payments) so to suggest that success at Braintree is indicative of failure at PayPal is no more accurate than when a Stripe investor says it.

I actually work for a competitor of PayPal - but I'm informed enough to see that from the Merchant perspective of this (and the source) article, actually PayPal have innovated more this past year than they have in the prior decade. From a Merchant and multi-channel standpoint the competitor view is "PayPal are really going for it".

That's hardly the withering flower implied by "bleeding" or "screwed" - sounds more like blossoming. Of course most of this carries no weight with a vast majority of respondents who are aggrieved consumers or sole-trader PayPal/eBay users who believe their terrible service experience reflects on PayPal's strategic growth. It doesn't!