It seems like buyers prefer protection a lot more than sellers do. Or maybe sellers just don't have any power to decide, and have to go where the buyers are.
> It seems like buyers prefer protection a lot more than sellers do.
It's a consequence of the regulations on credit cards. The cardholder can reverse allegedly-fraudulent transactions. Paypal can't reasonably do something else while processing credit cards, so they don't.
It's quite stupid because you end up with customers who aren't even looking for credit, they're willing to prepay and are willing to trust the seller, they just want to transfer funds digitally. But they can't because the seller/card processor doesn't trust the buyer not to reverse the transaction and the regulations don't allow the buyer to abandon that right up front.
PayPal could at least offer the option for purchases funded entirely from existing funds in the buyer's account. That they don't suggests that protecting buyers is more valuable to them than protecting sellers.
Debit transactions have the same sort of protections.
The main difference between debit and credit is that if you're the victim of fraud with a debit card, money has been taken from your bank account and you have to fight to get it back. The fight is usually not very hard, but it takes some time. If it hits at the wrong moment you may have trouble buying food or paying rent on time, even though you'll get the money back before too long.
It’s the same with PayPal, really. They’re prioritizing the people buying stuff over the people selling stuff.