This from a Paypal update they emailed me a link to today; ‘When made available, Account Updater will allow merchants to update their U.S. customers’ eligible card data stored with PayPal to enable the seamless processing of recurring billing, recurring payments, and/or other eligible transactions.’
In other words, if you use a credit card one time w/ a merchant through Paypal, expect that credit card to go on file so Paypal has another way of automatically having you pay them when they believe you should (until you take it off).
I’m not sure I like that. I haven’t had companies help themselves to my money w/ an accidental double or extra month’s payment more than a handful of times, but it’s a profitable move for Paypal to make no matter how many reversals they wind up having to do.
Im letting Paypal lapse. Who needs this kind of “convenience”?
I do.
For what it’s worth, I’m an Authorize.net merchant and they gave me this ability 2-3 years ago. Other processors have this ability too. I just had to update my credit card expiration date and CVV2 info when I got a new card and somewhere I went already had the new info.
This isn’t just a PayPal thing, it’s an overall credit card processing thing.
I do as well; not so much for buying things but for getting paid for side jobs.
But only for U.S. customers?
The credit card companies have been doing this for forever. Actually, in most cases I like it. It saves me a lot of trouble when my cards are updated due to fraud.
But one time it was different. I had a subscription to a major online publication. I wanted to cancel and I couldn’t. Something about not having access to e-mail account I had used to subscribe, I don’t remember exactly. But the company was not helpful. Canceling involved a series of BS procedures designed to keep you from canceling. I could do anything I wanted with my online account but cancel.
I said “screw this”. I went into the online account and changed the payment card number to all zeros.
Then at the next billing period, I was charged fir the subscription. I called the CC company.
I got the standard line about how they updated card numbers for the convenience of the customer. I then mentioned that my card number hadn’t changed, the had simply approved a charge from someone that had not given them a valid card number. I told them I wanted the charges reversed.
The woman tried to fight me on it, telling me I had to go through the publication and properly cancel the subscription. I asked her who in the hell she thought she was. I reminded her that my contract was between me and the publication, and that if they had any problem with me not correctly canceling my subscription, I’m sure they have a robust legal department that I would be happy to deal with directly. But, I told her, she had no right to take sides in the dispute and to authorize payments that I was explicitly telling her NOT to make.
She did not have an answer for this, she reversed the charges and canceled the future payments.