Rajiv Dutta who leads PayPal had great news as the company turns 100 months old. They’re now the second most preferred method of payment in the US, second only to Visa but ahead of Mastercard and American Express.
PayPal is investing heavily in new hardware and technology and this is the reason their service failed for many hours on June 1st this year. It was during an upgrade to new quadruple redundant servers on a new operating system that the glitch affected payments. The upgrade was needed to support the $1500 per second processed across 190 different countries that PayPal now operate in.
An interesting titbit is that PayPal users hold $2 billion in their accounts which is refreshed every two weeks. PayPal don’t pay interested on account balances is that’s some $50 billion a year waiting to be spent or withdrawn for them to invest!
Fraud and chargebacks were addressed. The PayPal security key is proving effective in phishing prevention and will be rolled out as of tomorrow to both PayPal and eBay customers. Chargebacks have been reduced by 50% since dispute resolution was rolled out. Now sellers and their buyers can resolve claims online rather than face instant chargebacks. From August new Payment Reviews will be introduced where payments will be held and flagged pending – once PayPal inform you the product is good to go 100% protection against chargebacks will be given. New risk tools and filters will be introduced and they aim for an industry first with every PayPal address being confirmed.
The only thing Rajiv missed out is which of these developments refer to the US and which will be rolled worldwide. We’d expect most to go global soon after implementation if not straight away.
UPDATE 15th June: We’ve had confirmation today that the commitment to confirm all PayPal addresses DOES mean ALL PayPal addresses worldwide! 🙂
