PayPal is a global payment service for online orders that has been around since the late 1990s. One of its most famous co-founders was Elon Musk, who then caused a sensation with Tesla, Twitter and his SpaceX space program.
PayPal has been on board since Welthonig was founded in 2016. We have accepted payments with PayPal from the beginning. It was always an elegant, quick way to pay with PayPal in the online shop and thereby speed up shipping.
After more than 8 years with PayPal, we can say that there are not only positive aspects for us. Unfortunately, there have been some negative aspects that have led us to forego payments with PayPal.
Among other things, we had delicious honey from a Cuban beekeeper. After PayPal saw this, our PayPal account was immediately blocked, payments were no longer made and the credit was frozen until we could prove that we had removed Cuban honey from our range. It was completely incomprehensible to us that PayPal based the blocking on a trade embargo directed by the USA against Cuba from the 1960s. PayPal didn't care at all that World Honey is subject to EU law and that we have no connections to the USA. In addition, we recently discovered how easy it is for cybercriminals when the PayPal account is linked to the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. An attack on Meta's business account led to bookings with PayPal in February of this year. Only the report to the police and the intervention of criminal investigators were able to save us from greater damage. You go to bed in the evening with a PayPal balance and wake up the next morning with debt. Ultimately, we were also able to use the PayPal credit to make our own payments without a bank account. For example, we were able to pay for parcel labels for the Austrian Post using PayPal. We were also able to pay for goods purchases with PayPal at times. However, PayPal acceptance is declining and neither the post office nor our trading partners continue to accept PayPal.
This means that we will phase out PayPal's payment service on April 30, 2024 . From May onwards, PayPal payments will no longer be possible in the Welthonig webshop. All other payment methods by credit card (VISA, Mastercard, AmEx), ApplePay, GooglePay, ShopPay, direct debits and eps transfer and a few more remain unaffected. The classic bank transfer without the Internet will still be possible and we think that we can offer attractive payment options even without PayPal. Even if PayPal will certainly miss one or two users.