“The company, Paypal inc.”
Image extraction: DALL・E2

As per the title, that’s what happened, but in the end, it’s a story of how it was my own fault. Even so, isn’t PayPal a bit too inconvenient to use? This entry is just to say that. It’s a complaint.

And it’s also a wake-up call that you need to be careful when using PayPal. …That being said, I think it’s a mistake that is unlikely to happen since most users would be using it in a state where the authentication work has been completed.

The characteristics of PayPal backfired

One characteristic of PayPal, which is not available in banks or other banking services to my knowledge, is the ability to instruct and execute money transfers from PayPal to other banks (or banking services).

Although there may be other such services if one searches for them, as far as I know, it’s only PayPal.

Also, the PayPal account itself has a money pool feature. In other words, it can be used like a regular bank deposit account where you can save money.

Having a PayPal account allows you to link banks and credit cards and make payments and transfers from PayPal, and you can also use the money saved within PayPal for payments and transfers.

It might be said that these are characteristics due to being a relatively old service from the heyday of fintech.

Moreover, if it’s between PayPal accounts, you can make payments and such just by knowing the registered email address of the other party, which is convenient in that respect.

The Indirect Reason for the Failure on my End

Using two accounts, one for Japan and one for overseas, and attempting to consolidate them into one, played a role in the failure. The overseas account was originally created in the USA, and the address was later changed to Italy.

Recently, due to the necessity of providing proof of my new residence, the account for Japan was deleted. However, since the email address used for that account was one I frequently use personally, after deleting the Japanese account, I changed the email for the overseas account to the one used for the Japanese account.

Information such as PayPal registration emails and passwords are stored in a text file, but due to previous changes to email, password, and registered addresses on both accounts, it was somewhat confusing which was which.

Even taking into account some minor confusion on the user’s end like this, PayPal has become something I can’t recommend to people for reasons of UX (User Experience), especially now that easy-to-use banking services like Wise, Revolut (or PayPay, etc. in Japan) are readily available.

Negative Points of PayPal

The issue that a separate company called Xoom manages transfers and is not seamlessly integrated with PayPal. Consequently, there are times when it’s unclear why there are issues with a transfer. Additionally, the customer support is terrible. Although this is common with other apps and services these days, specifically, it just sends you in circles through the Q&A forever (or so it feels due to the UI).

Even when you update information registered with PayPal, it does not get reflected in your Xoom account, which is quite inconvenient compared to other banking services.

And what seems fatal due to that (I think), is that the reasons for transfer errors are not properly displayed.

Specific Details of the Failure

In short, I transferred money from a banking service account linked to PayPal to the credit card of that same banking service. In other words, I sent money back to the source of the funds. Maybe it should be said that I ‘returned’ the transfer. And in doing so, I ended up having to pay a fee to PayPal, albeit a small one.

Why such a foolish mistake occurred was because I intended to send funds that were pooled within PayPal.

However, my account had not completed personal authentication, so it was not supposed to be able to send money, but there were absolutely no warnings or indications of this, neither in the app nor on the web version (via browser).

And to make matters more complicated, auto-debit worked without any problems with that account. Specifically, the account continues to pay for monthly mobile phone charges and several app subscription fees. Even now.

I tried to send a quite small amount (a few thousand yen) before, but at that time, it only displayed a transfer error, and there were no messages prompting personal authentication or anything. I thought about various things, like whether it was because the transfer destination was a bank account in Japan (thus, overseas), but eventually, I didn’t understand, and eventually, I made that transfer by another means.

This time, after failing the transfer many times, that message finally appeared, and I came to understand the reason why I couldn’t transfer. Finally.

Now that personal authentication is complete, a “Transfer from PayPal account” type of button, which had never appeared in any form before, has appeared, and I can now make transfers.

If they had simply grayed out that button and made it untappable when personal authentication was not yet complete, it would have been clearer what selection was made as the source of the transfer. That’s for sure.

Personal Reasons for Writing about Such a Minor Failure

I can almost hear voices saying, “Why bother writing a whole article about such a trivial matter?” However, the reason I wanted to document this failure is that, inadvertently through this mistake, I ended up exchanging a quite significant amount of Japanese yen into euros, from my perspective.

The service to which I issued the transfer instruction from PayPal is called Wise (I have written about Wise previously here). I was using Wise accounts not only in euros but also in Japanese yen and US dollars.

The instruction from PayPal was in euros, but since the amount of euros in Wise was insufficient to meet the instructed amount, funds from my US dollar and Japanese yen accounts were automatically converted into euros and transferred. And while it came right back, it was deposited into the euro account. It’s natural since that’s how I instructed it.

I don’t really care that US dollars were exchanged for euros. However, it’s a different story with the Japanese yen, especially now (as of October 9, 2023).

It is a time when we might be approaching the end of an unprecedented (as I personally feel) period of a weak yen, with 1 euro equal to about 157 yen.

The fees paid to PayPal and the time spent, to be blunt, were not so significant as to specifically write about.

However, the fact that this small mistake resulted in firmly exchanging yen for euros is too merciless, silly, and helpless.

Looking at it, I feel slightly guilty that PayPal got inadvertently criticized… I am sorry about that. But even so, I still want to point out anew the shoddiness and unfriendliness of PayPal’s UI.

There are still quite a few people and merchants, such as individuals in their 50s who are reluctant to use banking services, who prefer to use PayPal.

Therefore, I want to send cheers to PayPal, hoping they’ll do a bit better. While it might seem like a somewhat condescending encouragement, I intend it as encouragement, and I hope PayPal takes it as such.

Was it really a mistake to exchange yen/euro now?

However, whether the timing of this exchange was off cannot be said definitively by anyone at this point. In other words, there is no guarantee anywhere that the yen will not continue to weaken even further. On the contrary, it seems like there’s a high probability that it will. It’s a frightening thought.

In any case, it does seem like a timing where a bit of a rebound from the rapid depreciation of the yen that occurred in the short term might happen.

While watching how things would unfold and waiting for even slightly better rates to make the exchange, this mistake happened, and it was irritating. But, there is quite a possibility that I might be thankful for this mistake six months or a year from now.

As I wrote in “Depreciation of the Yen is Hard for Japanese Living Abroad,” on a larger scale, such as yearly, there is a reality that charts are forming which indicate that the Japanese yen seems likely to decline against major currencies like the US dollar and the euro.

…Well, even those charts, after all, are uncertain and are just one possibility.