PayPal Credentials: Do you trust the staff?

Many forum owners and administrators have chosen to share their PayPal information with fellow staff members, particularly when it comes to being able to purchase items on the community's behalf. Do you (or would you) allow your staff to have access to such sensitive information?

 

No I would not. I got some small trust issues and would never let them have access to that unless I really know them and they need to access it.

 

Heck no! I don't see any need for staff members to be purchasing anything in the first place, that's my responsibility.

I thought this thread would actually be about those Paypal donate mods that have you enter your Paypal email address... a crooked staff member could easily change that and you might not notice until people started asking where their donations went.

 

Ah, no! I wanted to make this thread... interesting. :lol:

 

Yes it is an interesting thread. Just have to wait and see if anyone share there paypal with the staff.

 

Well, it hasn't happened to me (the donate mod thing), and my staff has always been trustworthy, but it certainly could happen to someone. At the very least they should make it so that information is in the files on the server, instead of right there in the control panel.

 

I wouldn't share the PayPal information with anybody except partners or co-founders if it was a group effort. If, say, I eventually recruited a co-admin on my Linnie Forum, I would not give them PayPal access.

 

I'm exactly the same, Nick - I'll only allow access if these individuals are either a) founding members of the venture or b) partners with me.

 

I have serious trust issues and giving out paypal information would only occur in the event of my death. I already keep a close eye on anything that runs through paypal, like domain renewals, so it would probably lead to more tension between admins at least for me.

 

I've been having issues with PayPal as of late - are there any real viable alternatives? These problems (on their end) are proving to be a real annoyance.

 

There's a few, but I haven't had any experience with them.

NOCHEX, Worldpay, Authorize.Net, 2Checkout, Moneybookers, CCBill

 

Sure, I'll share mine with anyone who wants to leave a $100K deposit with me first

 

lol John.

No I don't share my paypal info with anyone. Mainly because I don't leave any more than say $50 in my paypal account at any given time, and that is only there to pay my hosting bill. Anything over that is transferred to my bank account.

 

If you have a business account, you can add users to your account. They would have their own logins and you can restrict what they can do. It can be a really easy way to offload business activities while retaining control over the account. You can even set it up so your accountant can download your Paypal History easily without access to anything else.

As for the $100K comment above. If you are running a business, anyone that handles money in the business should be insured and bonded for at least that much. This is pretty standard practice. Small business insurance will cover the number of employees specified on the policy.

You should have a personal and business Paypal account as well so you don't mix funds which can cause a lot of tax issues.

The only one of these that is similar to Paypal is Moneybookers. Nochex is close but not really the same. The others are just credit card processors.

 

This really comes in handy, actually. We are using a business account for our AA funds.
The only downside is that you cannot associate an e-mail address with the additional users. If they forget their password, they always have to come to me to have it manually reset, which is a huge hassle.

 

I'm with John and Wayne here. I have 2 accounts. A personal one, and a business one. Makes things in my life easier. I rarely leave more than 50 bucks in either account. We all know how PayPal can be.

 

You can say that again.

I, too, have both a personal account and a business account. Regardless of the fact that I despise dealing with PayPal, I find it easier this way.

 

I have low patience with companies like them.

 

It's an absolute pain in the ass. I just recently had an issue with them and, while it was indeed resolved, it was something that should not have happened in the first place.

Grumble, grumble.

 

Indeed. As soon as someone is satisfied with the work, I transfer the money to my bank account.