Online Payments: Safety First

This article was written in partnership with PayPal. The text highlights how PayPal has helped us as digital nomads and what their company is all about.

This is the third and final instalment of our Nomadic Tools: The PayPal Series. If you’ve been following, you’ll remember that our first post was an introduction to how Lauren and I live an unconventional semi-nomadic life of travel and work. No we don’t live in tents, we just don’t have a mortgage.

We then delved deeper into how PayPal has helped us (and countless others) set up and run businesses right from their own homes or street side stalls. Of course the service isn’t limited to small businesses: for instance luxury game lodges such as Singita also rely heavily on PayPal’s services for receiving international payments.

We also spoke more about how we use PayPal as freelancers who sell “digital”, or non-physical products. You are welcome to read more about that in the second post if you like.

And today we’re addressing the obvious question that goes hand in hand with the exchanging of your hard earned money. Security.

Is PayPal able to reliably back up their services with a secure system of handling your money? What if I get conned by a seller? What happens when someone asks me for a refund? Can they even do that? Can I ask for a refund?

We’ll address those kinds of questions today.

Right off the bat however I’m going to admit that I’m not well versed in the ins and outs of “PayPal Security” and that’s simply because over the last three years I’ve never had to question it.

I remember once issuing a refund to a company that we decided not to continue working for and it was as easy as clicking “submit refund”.

I’ve also had to request a refund from an online camera store that supplied goods I wasn’t happy with and while I was fairly anxious at the outcome of that, the camera store in question was reputable and honoured the refund without question.

They even paid for the return shipping cost.

But can we trust them to stand in our corner?

PayPal obviously says that they are a secure means of making payments and receiving cash but are they really, and how so?

Well, if you’ve ever run a business and someone has come in, bought something with their credit card and it turns out they are a criminal and the card was stolen – you’ll know what a huge hassle it can be to sort out all the admin for the credit card company.

PayPal helps to eliminate this kind of problem by automatically screening the transaction, helping businesses fight fraud before it happens. They also make it more secure to pay online as they never share the buyer’s financial information with the seller.

That means the buyer is reassured their financial information is kept more secure and private. Plus, the seller doesn’t have to deal with keeping record of credit and debit card and to comply with relevant regulations. So this is a win-win!

What about the most common question: what If I buy something online and that product isn’t delivered, is damaged, is not the product I ordered? The good news is that PayPal offers “Buyer Protection” which will reimburse you for eligible transactions and covers you for 180 days after the purchase. So offering PayPal payments helps put customers at ease.

So as someone who uses PayPal to make payments and to receive money, those really are all the questions I can think of. I can honestly say I’ve never had an issue in the three years I’ve dealt with them. I’m actually really excited about using their mobile app more now that we’re back in Cape Town as I haven’t really had many occasions to use it when we lived in a really remote village.

As far as PayPal’s internal security goes, I trust them. I haven’t had reason not to.

At the end of the day they aren’t a piddly little company, they’re established and trusted in the market. They are also the unquestioned forerunner of e-commerce.

So that basically brings this series to an end. I hope that over the last few months you’ve found this series helpful. PayPal is one of our go-to tools and quite frankly I can’t wait until more companies and individuals embrace it. I can’t stand it when companies ask me to fill information sheets out that are the length of my arm. It’s 2016 for goodness sake! 🙂

If you’ve got more questions for us, please pop them in the comments and we’ll do our best to answer you.

Any questions for PayPal? Contact them HERE