We were recently asked by a potential customer, who was interested in our NFC-enabled coins, if we would accept paypal. We had to think about this longer than we should have, as many recent potential customers had decided that they were ‘holding out for now but they’d be in touch’, and while we appreciate the desire to increase ones purchasing power before spending, it leaves us with less to do! The prospect of a solid order, even in fiat, was tempting but we decided to politely decline payment in paypal and here’s my response explaining why:
Dear XXXX,
I’m afraid we’re not well suited to accept payments in paypal.
Part of it is practical: the bastards at paypal love(d?) to screw with any account I’ve ever had with them and prevent me from using them in a useful way. To my knowledge I’ve never done anything to give them a reason to do so, but it’s left an awful taste in my mouth.
Part of it is ideological: Our service was instituted specifically to provide holders of BTC (along with LTC and perhaps PPC one day) with a way to turn their digital currency into something tangible. There are a variety of services which will happily take dollars for the same thing, but we wanted to stand out as an example of how BTC wasn’t just a speculative plaything, but was actually a part of the internet’s collective capability leaking out into the real world. We’ve only taken orders for BTC (and 1 LTC order, surprisingly), and so for the other 8-9 holders of our coins, they can say that they possess a crafted, data-storing, 3D printed coin which one can ONLY obtain using the currencies they represent. That they can then use the coin to store some of that digital money is icing on the cake.
So that’s why, at this point, I feel that taking paypal for the coins would ‘devalue’ those which exist. I’m really not intent on creating a barrier or burden for you in this, but I feel like some sort of principle would be sacrificed. I hope that you and your friend appreciate this subtlety.
That being said, I’ll happily take bitcoin or litecoin for your purchase. If you need any assistance in obtaining either I’ll do my best to point you in the right direction. I apologize for the inconvenience.