What do companies so disparate as Tesla Motors, LinkedIn and YouTube have in common? Easy! All of them belong now to successful and billionaire businessmen who once were part of the management team of a company that today is listed as one of the most profitable in the world of digital transactions and payments: We are talking about PayPal! Which is probably one of the most conventional and loved payment methods by almost the entire Internet community since its creation in 1998. And the same payment method that today has a great influence inside cryptocurrencies market, to the point to even impact indirectly on the prices of Bitcoin (BTC), the most popular cryptocurrency of all. In this post we talk and analyze about the benefits and drawbacks of using this popular payment method for crypto P2P trading. Let's start!
What is PayPal, what I need to use it?
PayPal is a company in the e-commerce sector that cannot be considered as a bank, since its system allows users to make payments and transfers over the Internet, but without sharing financial information with the recipient, nor generating any interest rate to its users for having money stored in their accounts. However, they are a company regulated and supervised by the United States Department of the Treasury.
In this way, Paypal processes individual transactions for online buyers and sellers, auction sites, commercial stores and other great variety of businesses that offer a wide range of services. Most of its customers came from the auction site and online shopping website: eBay, a company that bought Paypal in 2002 and with whom they were linked until July 2015, the same year that PayPal launched PayPal.me, a version of their system that offered the option of making P2P payments using personalized URL addresses.
Creating a PayPal account is quick and easy, just enter a valid email address and password. Once the user has done this, it will be matter of providing some information such as full name, country of residence, ZIP code and telephone. Then, you must choose the type of your account, to define if it will be it a Personal Account (for individuals who buy), a Premier Account (for individuals who buy and sell), or a Business Account (for companies that directly sell online).
Finally, PayPal will ask you to link a bank account, debit or credit card number with which you can credit funds to finance the transactions you need. But all this data will be private and never disclosed to other users.
How can I buy Bitcoin P2P with PayPal?
Since PayPal announced that it would partner with BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin as providers of Bitcoin to make and accept Internet payments in 2014, the interest in acquiring Bitcoin with this payment method has been in constant growth to this day. So much so, that PayPal today is still almost the first payment method that beginners use to carry out crypto transactions. So to buy Bitcoin P2P, you just need to go to your favorite P2P platform of your choice, create an account or log in (if you already have one), and start looking for filtered sale ads by accepted payment method, in this case: PayPal.
LocalCoinSwap should be your first choice when looking for decentralized P2P platform if you want to buy BTC, ETH or ERC20 tokens quickly, reliably and securely. We offer a broad portfolio of clients where there will always be a potential seller close to you, but where you can also search for offers in more than 100 available countries and select the one that best suits for your needs. So what are you waiting to head to LocalCoinSwap TODAY and create your first account?
Which are the advantages and disadvantages of buying Bitcoin P2P with PayPal?
One of the main reasons why PayPal is so preferred by the general community is because of its interchangeability to traditional economic systems; offering immediate transfers (especially at international level) without the need to be supervised by a bank; carry out currency exchange instantaneously offering profitable rates and ultimately, its outstanding ease of use, since to send and receive payments you only need to share the email address associated with the account and the shipping amount.
On the contrary, when taking into account the disadvantages of this payment method, we can mention the fact that large amounts of money cannot be stored in PayPal accounts, neither for Personal Accounts nor for Business Accounts; as well as the commissions that the company charges for each type of transaction carried out with its accounts, either for sending and receiving money or making payments for goods and services. All these conditions and rates can be read on its website.
However, the main downside that make some experienced sellers consider it twice before accepting PayPal as a payment method to sell bitcoin P2P are the chargebacks. Since PayPal, within its consumer protection rules, offers the option of processing refunds if a buyer is not satisfied or does not recognize a transaction as legitimate at the spot. Which puts BTC sellers in a tight situation when closing a trade moment comes, since it implies that a payment can be reversed after bitcoin has been transferred. On this subject we already talked previously in our post about how to avoid scams when trading P2P.
Can I buy Bitcoin with PayPal in person?
Of course it is possible! While in-person payments are one of the fastest and safest ways to buy Bitcoin, it is important to be vigilant when it comes to any type of transaction in the real world. Thus, if security is an issue of concern to you when meeting face-to-face with an unknown person to buy Bitcoin, then it is important that you can meet in a public place and in broad daylight. Do not exchange unsolicited personal data with the seller and always be aware of your surroundings!
Finally, show your counterparty that you have made the payment in PayPal and in turn ask the seller while you are with them to allow them to verify that the amount of Bitcoin released is correct. If you still don't feel 100% confident despite all this, consider taking a friend with you to the meeting to assure an extra precaution. Over this and other considerations to keep in mind when buying BTC in person, we also talked in an entry last year on how to buy bitcoin with cash-in-person using LocalCoinSwap.
Conclusions
As you can see, PayPal, like the wide range of payment methods that the crypto P2P market offers today, has its advantages and disadvantages. Although it is true that it has become a worldwide reference platform for making payments almost everywhere in the world, within the Bitcoin world, it involves a series of risks that make sellers who accept this payment method charge a high commission for your transactions. So remember that at LocalCoinSwap we are the first decentralized P2P crypto platform that offers you more than 300 payment methods to buy and sell bitcoin, ethereum and other ERC20 cryptocurrencies that we have available, all while charging very low commissions that allows you to create commercials without limits and also, with the confidence and security that our Escrow system.
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