Why does PayPal have no decent rivals?

[musicales]

Everyone worries about Google monopolizing the search engine situation, well what about PayPal in the Ecommerce world. Sure there are lots of WorldPay/Netbanx type options, but nothing that comes close to PayPal's ease of use, flexibility and FREEness!

Having recently had a bunch of problems with them on a UK site (it seems to make life very difficult for SOME UK customers, insisting on the 4 digit code that appears on customers credit card slip before letting them join) I've been scouring the net for alternatives and have realised that in essence - there aren't any!

What happens when eBay decides to abandon the commerce and subscriptions side of things and concentrate on the auctions? Why on earth does PayPal not have any decent competition?

[Longhaired Genius]

I think it's because Paypal has never made any money. The major credit-card companies could introduce a Paypal type systen within days if they wanted to. They don't want to.

[Essex_boy]

Pay pal doesnt make money? really? That does surprise me.

Cant really say why there arent any decent alternatives, I use a system thats more expensive than paypal but it mean I can withdraw money from a cashpoint machine.

[dmorison]

What we need is the major credit card players to get their co-ordinated act together and sort a micro-payment system out.

[pbreit]

PayPal financials: [sec.gov...]

Creating and operating a payment service like PayPal is extremely risky, difficult and expensive.

[martinibuster]

western union? They own or partner with bidpay, too.

[bonanza]

Citi Group is making a run at it as well for two years now with their c2it product. Pretty much the same thing as Paypal without the major application (eBay) backing it. Last time I checked, Paypal, c2it, and Western Union are the big ones (like McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy's,or more like McD's, Carl's Jr. and In and Out burger.)

eBay seems to have single-handedly made Paypal, after they tried to make a go at it themselves, threw in the towel and bought them.

[amznVibe]

I don't think you noticed that those numbers are in THOUSANDS.
Which means their assets are $275,243,000 with liabities of $115,026,000

$150+ million. Unless I got this wrong, I'd say that's pretty successful.

[jackobar]

I use worldpay on mysite,but i got it thru lwd, as a free shopcart was thrown in,which saved quite a few pounds.
.but i agree. paypal, if you a member, is so easy for the punters.
plus you get $5.00 if you drive new customers in..or something like that.

[amznVibe]

PayPal is about to have a very formidable rival [webmasterworld.com] - Amazon.com