SLers Debate Linden Dollar Paypal Transaction Increases

Interesting /SecondLife thread around the fact that it now costs a minimum of $3 to send Linden Dollars to Paypal as real cash. "If you're not familiar with the cashout policy from before," notes SL content creator KarstenRutledge, "it used to be a flat $1 USD to have them send you your own money to PayPal." He believes this is Linden Lab's bid to make up for reduced revenue from the company's new SL land tier reduction offer, though others speculate that Paypal may have increased its own fees, and Linden Lab is just passing that uptick on to consumers.

I've asked Linden Lab for comments on this change, and will update accordingly if I get any.

Update, 12:12PM: Linden Lab's Peter Gray sent a relevant link; turns out this change was announced a few weeks ago:

Upcoming Changes to Fees

In addition to taking time, processing credit and paying real money to users’ PayPal and Skrill accounts incurs costs to Linden Lab. Each transaction actually costs us more than the $1 (USD) fee we have been charging. To address that and in light of the significant investments we’ve made to improve the related systems and processes, we will be making some adjustments to the fee structure, beginning next month.

As of April 5, 2016, instead of charging a flat fee of $1 (USD) per transaction, we will charge a fee of 1.5% of the transaction value, with a minimum fee of $3 (USD) and a maximum of $15 (USD). Additionally, the fee for purchasing L$ on the LindeX will increase 10¢, from $0.30 (USD) to $0.40 (USD) per transaction.

We hope that you’ll enjoy the improved speed of credit processing and understand that these upcoming fee updates help to support the complex work involved in enabling Second Life users to buy and sell Linden Dollars for real money at a massive scale, all while keeping the system reliable, safe, compliant with regulations - and now faster.

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Comments

[Ciaran Laval]

I suspect it's more to do with the costs that accompany the tax and account requirements that Linden Lab now enforce. They have had to tighten up their procedures to comply with US laws in order to keep offering this service.

Additionally, in the initial blog post announcing these changes, Linden Lab said that it costs them more than $1 to process these payment.

[sweet valentine]

they have been taking a loss on this for years ...its time and some will still have to wait ...it all depends on your trust factor

[Memememememe]

taking a loss for more than a decade