As of 9/2/22 pay pal now charging fees on buyers who now send gift payments

[D. Bergin]

Hot take here.

F&F is a service that Paypal offers, and that people take advantage of... because it's a service that Paypal offers... Period.

It's basically a straight wire service similar to aspects of Venmo (which Paypal also owns) and Zelle.

Don't mistake the terms "Friends" or "Family" as literal. Paypal doesn't have hundreds of customer service folks scouring ancestry dot com and Facebook pages, every time a payment goes through. They don't care your actual relation to the person you're sending money to.

It's simply their..."we'll send your money free, because it's your money and it doesn't cost us anything to do so...and in return, you will not whine, complain or ask us for help if you get conned, catfished, ripped off, scammed, taken to the cleaners, natural disastered, Ponzi schemed or crypto bro'd."

It's like handing over a pile of cash to somebody. You don't go back to the bank after leaving the ATM, and ask them to get your money back because a grifter on the street conned you in a shell game on your way to the casino. Once you remove that money from the machine...all bets are off.

At some point, Paypal makes their money somewhere along the money trail. Trust me. They'll be fine.

Just don't go overboard (35 a month does seem like a lot) or complain to them when things go south on you.

.....or take the time and go do the Venmo and Zelle thing a ma jigs that I mentioned earlier.

By the way, Paypal already told me I can't accept F&F payments anymore, because I have a "Business" account with them (new policy). They did say I was welcome to open a "Personal" account with them so I can accept F&F payments...but I haven't bothered to go through the hassle of taking them up on that quite yet.