Characteristics and functioning of PayPal system

Abstract

PayPal is an acquiring financial institution, performing payment processing for online vendors, auctioning websites and other commercial users, and earning commissions fees for these services. This web system makes payments for Internet purchases faster and easier, and provides special benefits for frequent transactions of lower value. Account opening is completely free of charge, but the payment processing is subject to the collection of fee from the recipient of the payment, where the fee structure depends on the type of account. Although widely used, this system does not have the same legal treatment throughout the world, and the paper relates to a different treatment of this system in the laws of the united States, China, European union and Australia. Recently, PayPal has become available for sending money from Serbia, which means that the service is still incomplete and that the Serbian users will have to wait for the possibility of receiving the funds. The PayPal availability represents a positive step in terms of opening Serbian economy and raises opportunities for domestic users to buy products from abroad, and hopefully soon sell goods over the Internet. Therefore, the arrival of PayPal in Serbia is of particular importance for domestic users.

Keywords

• PayPal
• e-mail money
• P2P payments
• electronic payment systems