There Are Alternatives to PayPal

Over the last two weeks, I've seen a large number of authors and publishers talking about banding together to create a PayPal alternative, or looking to find one, but have not seen any concrete mentions of alternatives outside of one blog post (that I honestly wish I could locate, but have misplaced in my bookmarks of all the posts and comments dealing with this issue).

Firstly, there are alternatives, but none that have the full international capabilities of PayPal. (I get into more detail on that at the end of this post.) If any users from across the pond or other countries outside of the US know of any non-US based companies that process payments between two individual parties as well as at a merchant-consumer level, please send me in their direction.

Secondly, I've sent out contact emails to two of the three companies I've narrowed down to my "hopeful" list. This is a copy of the letter (which I've customized to each of them) that initiated talks:

Dear [PayPal alternative],

I represent an emerging micro-press seeking a primary payment processing service both for our direct sales and for issuing royalties. Our customers are primarily US based, but we often contract with authors from outside the US and will, eventually, be selling to individuals in other countries. Most of our wares are digital, which is why international payment options will be crucial to our potential growth.

There are statements on your website and blog that indicate an "in progress" status regarding international use of your service. The countries I am primarily interested in are Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. If these are some of the countries you are actively working on achieving a presence in, I would be very interested in utilizing your service.

I also have a secondary concern that, due to recent media attention, I feel the need to ask before committing my business to your service. Your answer would interest not only me, but several other micro, small, and medium publishers facing a similar problem regarding what has, almost overnight, been an outright denial of service from PayPal.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/01/corporate-censorship-reborn-paypal-bans-erotic-fiction/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/03/09/credit-card-companies-should-process-payments-not-censor-content/

PayPal's actions regarding this policy enforcement are actively being opposed by several well-known consumer and human rights groups. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/50969-anti-censorship-and-privacy-rights-organizations-sign-letter-for-smashwords.html

The public statement issued by PayPal on March 8 has not offered any significant enlightenment as to why they have begun enforcing arbitrary, subjective, and inconsistent standards on literature.

https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/03/paypals-acceptable-use-policy-on-sale-of-certain-erotica/

Although they have not included this in their public statements, PayPal is insistent that their sudden enforcement of policy against this sub-genre of literature has been prompted by the credit card companies they work with.

https://www.smashwords.com/press/release/28

https://www.smashwords.com/press/release/30 (Smashwords is one of the ebook publishers/distributors effected by the crackdown, and are currently the only company still in talks with PayPal to attempt to reach a clearer understanding of their policies)

VISA addressed this letter to inquiring parties at bannedwriters.com stating they did NOT have anything to do with PayPal's sudden demand for removal of lawful content, but it is still disconcerting that the layers of authority can be used to hide the reasons behind action being taken.

http://www.bannedwriters.com/2012/03/10/visa-writes-us-back-this-is-not-our-doing-paypal-censorship-erotica/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/03/10/visa-denies-telling-paypal-to-censor-fiction/

My actual question relates to corporate censorship and fairly resolving disputes that may arise during the use of your service. The micro-press I represent does not, at this time, sell any titles that would fall beneath the current focus of PayPal's policy enforcement. However, I, and many other authors, are not fond of the idea that any entity, other than our government of elected representatives at a local or federal level, would try and dictate what is acceptable content in the books we sell. What I ask is that, if there were ever a dispute between [PayPal Alternative] and my micro-press over the content of the works we offer for sale, that we could work together to resolve the conflict through an open dialogue that is not as disrespectful, false, inconsistent, or unsubstantiated as PayPal has demonstrated.

I respect the right of a company to decide who it wishes to do business with, but disagree with PayPal's conduct and lack of meaningful communication.

I would also like to ask, so I can pass the information along to several of the publishers who have effectively been cut off from their consumers, if your service could be utilized knowing that these topics and themes are contained in the literature they wish to sell. If you would be at all concerned as to how, precisely, those topics and themes are portrayed, I know the publishers and authors would be more than willing to enter into a dialogue to eloquently and accurately explain the merits of the content of their work, and to listen to any legitimate concerns that may need to be addressed before they could use your service.

Thank you for your time,

JR Wesley

Senior Editor

Crimson Melodies Publishing

crimsonmelodies.com

One of those companies has already responded to my inquiry, but we're waiting on the underwriting/compliance people to determine the official ruling about erotica. Note: I'm not mentioning the company name publicly just in case their underwriting/compliance department has something further to add that is genuinely beyond their control that would complicate the use of their service for selling erotica.

I'm hopeful, though. In their initial response, they pointed me to this particular snippet of their TOS:

Prohibited Businesses
(38) sexually-oriented or pornographic products or services

To which my response was:

"Products" I assume, would be applied to a book. But would it also apply to the contents of the book? This seems to be where the largest portion of the dispute between authors, publishers, and PayPal is originating. Would adult men's magazines fall under this clause, and if so, would it be for images or for the contents of their articles? Is non-fiction also effected, even if presented in a manner intended to educate and not titillate?
JR's second email to [PayPal Alternative]

I'm also encouraged because of this specific note in their email to me:

As for your second concern, I promise we will always be nothing but

extremely communicative.  …[] determining whether or

not we can process for you really comes down to the details.  It seems

like your bookstore, as it is currently, would definitely be fine.

But in a scenario where your store ends up being entirely driven by

sexually-oriented material, we may have to come back to this decision.

In this case, though, we will definitely first message you and start

a dialogue.  We'd love to process for everyone and I completely agree

with you that it's a terrible thing when booksellers get censored like

this without any notice at all.
response from [PayPal Alternative]

The line I highlighted seems to shed light on their TOS statement as what, precisely is not allowed: sexually-oriented BUSINESSES or (as a separate statement) pornographic products or services.

I'm still waiting to hear back on the details of that clarification, which may mean I'm simply the first to contact them about this issue. If they do respond back and need further information, I'll add in the missing links that were not in my initial email to them (the newest Forbes article that picked up VISA's denial was posted after my email was sent).

This is a start-up company, which means they place a lot of weight on sites like Forbes and TechCrunch (which is why I made certain to include those links to the issue at hand). Their company has already been featured in articles on those sites, and no doubt they would not want themselves associated in any way to the harsh criticism PayPal has been enduring.

In other words, I'm expecting good news.

Now, the bad news.

This company, and the other alternatives I've located or asked about, are US based.  This means:

Only US authors could be paid via their service because, in order to receive money, you must be based in the US
International consumers would need an international credit card to purchase products sold by a US account holder

I mentioned specific countries in my initial email to them because in our anthology and Ezine author hunt, we've accepted submissions from authors based out of those various countries. It looks like we'll still have to pay them via PayPal, for now, but we'll be able to use this alternative to sell our books internationally.

Look back here for updates, most likely on Monday or Tuesday if they are as on-the-spot in responding to me with further details as they were about my initial email.

As always, thanks for reading,

JR Wesley