this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
338 points (99.1% liked)
Privacy
32130 readers
1068 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
To me, it is. I don't have a credit card - I never got one offered by my bank (...which makes one think...). Back in the "early days" (early 2000s - mostly on Ebay) it was quite common to recieve the bank information of the seller after purchase. Then I had to wire the money to the sellers' account. There was no online banking. It could take up to a week to wire the money. After the seller recieved the payment, the ordered item got sent with postal service. When Paypal was introduced, it was a game changer: the seller recieved the money instantly, and could send the purchased item right away.
PayPal didn't come to my country until after online banking was already established, so I probably get a different experience. Banks here also issue (Visa) debit cards for free with a standard no fee bank account, so pretty much everyone has one. Debit cards being like a credit card in terms of paying online, but it uses money in your account.
Our biggest ebay-like site has their own payment portal for instant payments, done to copy what eBay did with paypal except you can't use it outside of paying for things you bought on that site. But people are generally paying wuth a debit/credit card. And bank transfers are very common, but I wasn't buying stuff online in 2001 so I'm not sure what it was like then.
Even today, paying with paypal in my country is far more likely to be a credit/debit card payment than a bank account one.