X-Message-Number: 16233 Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 20:54:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Ben Best <> Subject: Re: How PayPal works, a little more detail, and could work very well , indeed On Tue, 8 May 2001, James Swayze wrote: > \\EXTREMELY IMPORTANT NOTE// > For this to work Ben Best acting for INC or INC itself need first > to get signed up for PayPal. Then they/he must go to the PayPal > referral bonus page and get the referral bonus link URL to send to > cryonet for those here who wish to help to use to sign up. > \\EXTREMELY IMPORTANT NOTE// > Anyone wishing to help INC via this scheme should not sign up > prematurely without the proper link so it gets credited to INC. > Of course this is assuming Ben or INC does get involved with PayPal. > > For the record PayPal does not allow it's members to accept credit > card payments in the normal or direct sense. It does allow members > to request money but which an individual uses to fund payment through > PayPal is up to the individual the request is made to. How it would > allow Ben on behalf of INC or INC itself to accept credit card payments > is by other members of PayPal using the system and choosing to fund > their PayPal account via credit > card. They could very well take funds directly from their bank account instead. > > \\EXTREMELY IMPORTANT NOTE// > Please keep in mind the rules stated above from the PayPal FAQ. The > referred individual must go all the way and sign up also for the money > market account by transferring at least $100. It is not required that > the money market account stay funded but it might be prudent to keep > a little in it until the bonuses were paid. A friend of mine wishing > to honor my request recently signed up but did not go all the way. I > don't know if the bonus will > still be forthcoming should he in future fulfill the entire requirements. James, Alan, et. al., Thank you very much for your desire to be helpful and for your suggestions concerning PayPal. If I don't seem to be jumping into PayPal with both feet, it is partly because I am cautious, partly because my intelligence is limited and partly because I am swamped my other matters demanding my attention and detracting from my ability to give PayPal the attention it deserves. I must admit that I have been burned enough that I am not now enthusiastic about giving my visa number and e-mail address to every website that asks for it, despite great promises of things in return. On the other hand, the endorsement of repected allies (such as you, James & Alan) does offer some assurances. I must admit it does irk me that people cannot put a check in an envelope and mail it, but I do want to make things easy for people who want to pay. There are other constraints, however. I repeat, the HSCP is coming to a close at the end of June. And I need money before the end of June to pay for June (and EMs). So I am not now thinking in terms of setting-up a program for people to make monthly payments. It is inspiring that people are interested in this, but a new project will have to be started to replace HSCP (and I haven't got a clue who or where). If that happens, I would rather have someone else take over INC and do fund-raising. I am an "emergency President". I don't like doing fundraising, but I am hell-bent to see HSCP draw to a successful conclusion. Also, as I mentioned, I would have to go to California to get signing-authority on the bank account or to deal with bank officials over the phone. I'm not sure if this would be necessary for PayPal, and I'm not sure about opening a business account for INC at this time. To put the matter delicately, relations between Paul Wakfer and myself are currently very "strained". I don't have access to the INC website or e-mail address. On the other hand, if I take PayPal at face-value, PayPal says that it can send money to anyone with an e-mail address. Well, I have an e-mail address -- it appears on this message. So I suppose that anyone could simply use their credit card to send the money to me and trust that I would pass it to INC (which I would do). This would avoid the 2.2% or so interest charge that PayPal charges business accounts. However, I don't feel comfortable with this. I would really prefer that people send me a check, right now, in these final weeks of my fund-raising. Maybe in a few days I will feel more comfortable about PayPal. I will keep looking at it. Contributions to The Institite For Neural Cryobiology are 501(c)3 tax-deductable. Please send donations to: The Institute for Neural Cryobiology 238 Davenport Road #240 Toronto, Ontario M5R 1J6 CANADA Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16233