PayPal.com: Using characteristics for analysis of payment systems

As an example, let us look at PayPal.com, one of the most successful online payment systems on the market in the beginning of the 21^st century. Paypal.com is a good ex-ample of the alternative to credit card payments, providing the payment link between buyers and sellers. A user has to open an account with PayPal.com to be able to pay and receive money. The account then should be funded with credit or debit cards, elec-tronic wire transfers or by other methods. The registered customers can then transfer funds between their accounts, pay at the web sites that accept PayPal.com payments, and receive money from other users, Box 2.1. The PayPal business model is based on charging merchants for accepting PayPal payments. By 2004 it has also become possi-ble to use PayPal credits with the 19 million MasterCard and Visa merchants world-wide, without ever having to go through a bank account. This system is used by big online companies such as e-Bay or Amazon.com and has already attracted more than thirty million users by 2003. Let us see how PayPal.com measures against the charac-teristics of payment systems described above.

PayPal users can expect a high level of anonymity and privacy when paying directly from a PayPal.com account. The company claims that “PayPal is committed to protect-ing the privacy of our users. When you send or request money usprotect-ing PayPal, the only information the recipient sees is your email address, date of sign-up, and whether you have completed PayPal's verification process by confirming an account at another fi-nancial institution. Recipients never see your fifi-nancial information, such as your credit card or bank account numbers”, (Source: PayPal.com Help, 2003).

However, privacy of users can be easily compromised upon interference of govern-mental institutions, such as the police, (Cox, 2001). While these interferences can be justified to fight fraud, they still can still prevent users from adopting PayPal, because they may feel their privacy is compromised.

Incidents when governmental agencies access the records of EPSs operators may be very damaging to the company reputation and undermine user trust. Angry customers have formed a number of bodies to inform and protect themselves and new users against the questionable company policies and practices. Among such are www.paypalwarning.com, www.paypalsucks.com, PayPal Victims Club at Yahoo!

Groups, and www.aboutpaypal.org.

These problems can also lower the applicability of the system. The main reasons for merchants refusing to accept PayPal.com payments, reported at the above-mentioned Internet communities, are periodic changes in the PayPal’s policy regulating which products or services can be sold with using the system. For example, one of the policy changes banned selling modern firearms with PayPal. While the company is con-cerned about its reputation, the measures the firm has taken have irritated many mer-chants and users.

PayPal.com is a system with a centralised authorisation type. What is important from the user viewpoint is that a single company has control over all accounts and transac-tions, and not being monitored by other parties. It is harder for customers to appeal to the company’s decisions, as PayPal.com is the final authority in their own business.

The system has a high degree of efficiency, as transaction processing is automated, is done electronically, does not rely on expensive transaction channels as paper checks, and the costs of transactions are not correlated to the transferred amount. The system allows transactions with small and micropayments.

PayPal.com is a quite convertible system. Users are able to withdraw money from the system to their checking account, or request a check: “You can withdraw funds from

your PayPal account by requesting an electronic funds transfer to your bank account or by requesting that a check be sent to you by U.S. mail. When you withdraw to your bank account, your money should become available within 3-4 business days, but may take more time depending on your bank's policies… You will receive an automatic email acknowledgement every time you request to withdraw funds”, (Source: Pay-Pal.com Help, 2003). PayPay-Pal.com supports multiple-currency transactions. By the end of 2003 the Multiple Currencies feature of PayPal.com “includes the ability to send and receive PayPal payments in Canadian Dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling, or Yen, as well as U.S. Dollars”, (Source: PayPal.com Help, 2003).

It is assessed that interoperability of PayPal is rather low, as there are no signs that other parties, such as financial institutions will join the payment system. Because of its authorisation type, the system is quite scalable, at least in theory. The possible user base is limited mostly by technical constraints and the administrative overhead. There was not enough data available to this research to assess how reliable is the system.

Due credit should be given to the PayPal.com help, which describes the system in many details for both novel and experienced users, and was widely used to write the current analysis, see Box 2.1. For instance, the relevant help section provides with ex-planation what measures are used to ensure security. Availability of such information can be critical for potential customers considering whether they should use the system for payments. PayPal.com demonstrates understanding of the importance of security to end users stating that “the security of your information, transactions, and money is the core of our business and our top priority at PayPal”.

The interaction design of PayPal.com resembles a typical e-commerce shop, and us-ability guidelines for this type of websites can be applied to the design. There are, however, issues with usability of the PayPal’s design. For example, design firm 37signals.com suggests redesigning the PayPal’s payment confirmation screen, as seen in Box 2.2.

PayPal’s close integration with credit cards creates the greatest threat for the business.

Legions of fraudsters all over the world with stolen credit card information and identi-fications are using PayPal.com as a ‘money-laundering’ system to cash upon the situa-tion when the card is not present. Credit card transacsitua-tions where the card is not pre-sent and personally examined by a human controller account for the overwhelming majority of fraudulent credit card transactions. These and the other issues mentioned in this section can be very damaging to company reputation with users, merchants and

financial circles. Once again, it demonstrates how critical user-related factors could be for the success of an electronic payment system.

Making Payments

How do I send money?

You can send money by going to the Send Money tab, clicking the Pay Anyone or Pay for eBay Items subtab, and filling out the form. When you send money through the Pay Anyone subtab, you will be asked to choose a payment type. The payment types are:

• eBay Items: Use for eBay purchases and you will be taken to an additional form to enter information such as your item URL, eBay Buyer ID, and a mes-sage for the seller

• Auction Goods (non-eBay): Use for non-eBay online auction purchase and you will be taken to an additional form to enter information such as your item URL, auction site, and a message for the seller

• Goods (other): A purchase of goods in a non-auction context

• Service: A payment for the performance of a service.

Quasi-Cash: The transmission of money not involving an underlying service or good.

The bank that issued your credit card may treat this 'Quasi-Cash' transaction as a cash advance and charge you cash advance fees. PayPal has no control over these fees. If you select 'Quasi-Cash' you may want to use a payment method other than Credit Card (Instant Transfer or eCheck) to avoid potential fees.

Box 2.1 Making payments with PayPal.com. Source: PayPal.com Help, 2003.

2.5 Conclusions

In this chapter important aspects of electronic payment systems have been identified.

They are summarized in Box 2.3. It is clear that the current state of online EPSs is far from ideal and that there are problems that can affect user acceptance of EPSs. An-other important observation is that it makes little sense to focus on payment media-tion services, because they are trying to compensate for problems that should be re-solved in the existing payment systems these mediation services aggregate.

This research aims to define the ways in which user acceptance and, consequently, the success of new EPSs can be improved. The characteristics of EPSs can be used as ini-tial guiding directions for design of EPSs. It can be suggested that designing an EPS

Before: PayPal Confirmation Screen After: 37signals’ Better PayPal

What's wrong with this screen?

This PayPal screen, which confirms payment information, suffers from a lack of focus. This is an important issue since it is the last screen you see before money is sent.

On the existing page (above), the dollar amount and the recipient's email address are treated in the same font size, style, and weight as less significant information like

"type," "email subject," "note," etc. This di-lutes the page and, in effect, de-emphasizes the critical information. PayPal should strive to make it immediately obvious why you're there and where the focus should be, even at a glance.

Further, the "Check Payment Details" is con-fusing because some people may think

"Check" means bank check when it really just means verify.

How we made it better

We made the dollar amount the most obvious element on the page.

We used more conversational wording to make it easier to understand exactly what's going on and the purpose of the page.

We rearranged the data so the information flows more naturally (dollar amount, then re-cipient, then type of transaction, then funding source, etc.).

We grouped the dollar amount and the funding source into the same content block (currently they are too far apart for bits of info that are so closely related).

We separated the email subject and body into its own data grouping.

We labelled the "Send Money" button with the actual dollar amount ("Send the $37") for clar-ity's sake. Further, we grouped the edit and cancel buttons on the right while keeping the primary send money action button on the left in order to reduce the likelihood of clicking the wrong button.

Box 2.2 PayPal payment confirmation screen: usability issues and solutions.

Source: 37signals.com, March 2004.

that is reliable, secure, trustworthy and usable would benefit user acceptance of the EPS. However, the contribution of the characteristics to user acceptance and their im-portance should be confirmed with potential users of EPSs.

Anonymity/privacy Applicability Authorization type Convertibility Efficiency Interoperability Multi-currency

Reliability Scalability Security Traceability Trust Usability

Box 2.3 Summary of characteristics 0f electronic payment systems.

Designers of future EPSs should be convinced that the characteristics would provide adequate support of user activities and needs. To answer these questions, before sug-gesting to employ the characteristics for design of payment systems, it has to be found out that they make sense to end users and to establish what importance the users at-tach to the characteristics. It is quite likely that the users would find some characteris-tics more important than the others. In this case, it will be more effort- and cost-effective for designers to concentrate mainly on the characteristics that are considered important by the users. With such an approach designers can ensure that their system has a built-in potential for user acceptance from the very beginning of the system’s de-velopment. The following chapter describes an investigation into the importance of the characteristics of EPSs to end users in more detail.

Chapter 3