Google

Monday, January 14, 2008

Foreign Exchange Markets

The main participants of a foreign exchange market are:

* Commercial banks
* Exchange markets
* Central banks
* Firms that conduct foreign trade transactions
* Investment funds
* Broker companies
* Private persons

Commercial banks conduct the main volume of exchange transactions. Other participants of the market have their accounts at the banks, conducting necessary conversion transactions. Banks accumulate (through transactions with the clients) the combined needs of the market in exchange conversions as well as in calling and distributing money, breaking with it into new banks. Besides satisfying clients' requests, banks can operate independently, using their own assets. In the end, a foreign exchange market is a market of interbank dealings, and when speaking about the exchange rates movement, one should bear in mind the existence of an interbank foreign exchange market. In international foreign exchange markets, international banks with the daily volume of transactions of billions dollars have the biggest influence. These are Barclays Bank, Citibank, Chase Manhatten Bank, Deutsche Bank, Swiss Bank Corporation, Union Bank of Switzerland, etc.

Exchange markets Contrary to stock markets and markets for terminal exchange dealings, exchange markets do not work in a definite building and they do not have definite business hours. Thanks to the development of telecommunications most of the leading financial institutions of the world use services of exchange markets directly and via mediators 24 hours a day. The biggest international exchange markets are the London, New York and Tokyo exchange markets. In some countries with transitional economies there are exchange markets for currency exchange by juristic persons and for forming a market exchange rate. The state usually regulates the exchange rate in an active manner, using the compactness of the exchange market.

Central banks control currency reserves, realize interventions that influence the exchange rate, and regulate the interest investment rate in the national currency. The central bank of the United States, the US Federal Reserve Bank, or "FED", has the greatest influence in the international exchange markets. It is followed by the central banks of Germany, (the Deutsche Bundesbank or BUBA) and of Great Britain (the Bank of England, nicknamed the "Old Lady").

Firms that conduct foreign trade transactions. Companies participating in international trade have a stable demand for foreign currency (importers) and supply (exporters). As a rule, these organizations do not have direct access to exchange markets, and they conduct their conversion and deposit transactions via commercial banks.

Investment funds. These companies, represented by various international investment, pension,and mutual funds, insurance companies, and trusts, realize the policy of diversified management of portfolio of assets by placing there money in securities of the governments and corporations of different countries. The world-know fund, Quantum, is owned by George Soros, and it executes successful exchange speculations. Big international corporations as Xerox, Nestle, General Motors a.o. that make foreign industrial investments (creating branches, joint ventures etc.), also are firms of this kind.

Broker companies bring together a buyer and a seller of foreign currency and conduct a conversion dealing between them. Broker companies take a broker's fee. As a rule, in the FOREX market there is no fee as a per cent from the sum of a transaction, or as a sum agreed in advance. Usually the dealers of broker companies quote currency with a spread, that includes their fee. A broker company, having the information about the asked rates, is a place where the real exchange rate is formed according to closed deals. Commersial banks get their information about the current exchange rate from broker companies. The biggest international broker companies are Lasser Marshall, Harlow Butler, Tullett and Tokio, Coutts, and Tradition.

Private persons. Natural persons realize a wide range of non-commercial transactions in the sphere of foreign tourism, transfers of salaries, pensions, royalties, buying and selling foreign currency. This is also the biggest group that realizes speculative exchange transactions.


The working hours of the markets

Exchange markets work all the time. Their work in the calendar twenty-four-hour period is started in the Far East, in New Zealand (Wellington), passing the time zones in Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Moscow, Frankfurt-on-Main, London, then finishing the day in New York and Los Angeles. The count of time zones begins from the zero meridian in Greenwich near London, and the time itself is called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Depending on the season (summer or winter), the time in different financial centers of the globe will differ from the GMT.

The working day of exchange brokers of Western commercial banks starts, as a rule, at 7:30 am by local time. At 8:00 am the dealers are already closing deals. The morning hours are usually devoted to short analyses of events on the international exchange markets at the moment. The dealers use economic and technical analyses of the situation in the market, read analytical articles in newspapers, then exchange points of view and the latest rumors with each other and with dealers from other commercial banks. On the basis of various data, a picture of possible behavior of the exchange rate on the coming day is put together, with variants of all sorts of possible events.

By 8:00 am the market, consisting of individual dealers, will have worked out the tactics of its behavior, and it enters the operations of the international exchange market, giving a new and powerful impulse to the movement of the exchange rate. Various territorial markets can be given the following characteristics of an average typical activity during a 24 hour day.

Far East. Here the most active deals in the market are conversion transactions with the dollar to the Japanese yen, the dollar to Euro, Euro to yen, and the dollar to the Australian dollar. Very often fluctuations of exchange rates at that time are insignificant, but there are days when currencies, especially the dollar against the yen, make breath-taking flights. Especially so when the central bank of Japan makes an intervention. In Moscow its night and morning at that time, so till noon one can work with Tokyo, till mid-day with Singapore.

Western Europe. At 10:00 am Moscow time the market in the European financial centers of Zurich, Frankfurt-on-Main, Paris, Luxembourg are open. However, the really powerful movement of the exchange rate against the main currencies starts after 11:00 am Moscow time, when the London market is opened. This continues, as a rule, for 2 to 3 hours, after that the dealers of the European banks go to have lunch, and the activity of the market falls down a bit.

North America. The situation livens up with the opening of the New York market at 4:00 pm Moscow time, when dealers of American banks start working, and when European dealers come back from their lunch. Powers of European and American banks are about equal, that is why fluctuations of the rate do not go out of the limits of usual European fluctuations. Nevertheless, exchange dealers look forward to the opening of the New York market in order to receive fresh data about a possible movement of the rate (the more so if the European market has been sluggish). But when the European market is closed about 7p m or 8pm Moscow time, aggressive American banks, left alone on the "thin" market, are able to cause a sharp change of the exchange rate of the dollar against other currencies.


What is a FX speculator?

In modern conditions practically all financial transactions in the market are speculative by their nature, and there's nothing abnormal or criminal in it. One of the most vivid indices of markets' globalization is their daily volume of exchange transactions. Only in 10 major financial centers it increased from 206 billion dollars in 1986 to 967 billion dollars in 1992. According to the IMF, on the whole the volume is over 1 trillion dollars a day, and on some days it reaches 3 trillions. It is enough to say that the volume of gold and foreign exchange reserves of all developed countries was only 555.2 billion dollars in 1992, which is two times less than a daily volume of market transactions. According to some calculations, the volume of exchange transactions is 40 times bigger that the daily volume of foreign trade transactions. Therefore, most of the deals are caused not by a commercial necessity, but by financial reasons. And a financial transaction is always caused by the fact that money is looking for some profitable usage.

The international exchange system functioning in the world at the moment develops among people dealing with exchange and financial transactions: the so-called speculative psychology. In the world where exchange rates fluctuate for some per cent every week, where currencies, that are considered to be stable can lose 20 to 30 per cent of their cost during a few months, it's absolutely clear that the manager of a fund, trying to compensate for inevitable losses, has to use speculative operations. For example, a reasonable owner of dollars has to get rid of them very quickly and exchange them for Euro every time the expected fall of the dollar against Euro surpasses the difference between the profit from American notes and the profit from the respective German notes. For instance, if in the coming months the dollar is expected to fall against the Euro by 6%, and the profit from American notes is 6 per cent bigger than the profit from German notes, a speculator will probably decide to keep dollars. If the gap in the interest rates is less than the expected fall of the rate, the "running away from the dollar" begins.

Who are these speculators? An analysis shows that the main speculators acting in the market are institutional investors. Among them one can single out, first of all, official state institutions, and, secondly, private financial and other institutions. Thus according to the report of the "Group of Ten", state investors in Europe and Japan keep about 20 per cent of their assets in the form of foreign securities (in the USA only 7.5 per cent). However, the main feature of the 1980s was the growing international activity of private financial institutions: pension funds, insurance companies, and mutual funds. The Globalization of international financial markets is an objective process, reflecting the growing degree of economic relations in the world. It promotes a more effective distribution of financial resources.


Major world exchange markets:

AMEX - American Stock Exchange
BOVESPA - Sao Paulo Stock Exchange
CBOT - Chicago Board of Trade
CHX - Chicago Stock Exchange
CME - Chicago Mercantile Exchange
Commodities on the Web - List of the commodities
LIFFE - London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange
London Stock Exchange -London Stock Exchange
Nasdaq
NYMEX - New York Mercantile Exchange
NYSE - New York Stock Exchange
SBF - la Bourse de Paris
SES - Singapore Exchange
SET - Stock Exchange of Thailand
TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
TSE - Toronto Stock Exchange
LSEX - London Stock Exchange
CBOE - Chicago Board Options Exchange CBOE
PHLX - Philadelphia Stock Exchange

The Main Principles of Trading

In contrast to exchange transactions with real supply or real currency the participants of FOREX use trading with a margin deposit; i.e. marginal or leverage trading. In marginal trading, each transaction has two obligatory stages (they can be divided by period of time, which can be as long as you like): buying (selling) of currency at one price, and then selling (buying) it at another (or at the same) price. The first transaction is called opening the position, the second one, closing the position.

Opening a position, a trader furnishes a deposit sum from 0.5 to 4 per cent of the credit line, granted for the transaction. So, in order to buy or sell 100,000 US dollars for Japanese yens, you will not need the whole sum, but only from 500 to 2000 US dollars depending on your policy of controlling risks. When the position is closed, the deposit sum returns, and calculation of profits or losses is done. All the profit or losses caused by the change of currency rates is credited on your account.

Let's take a concrete example of getting a profit from the changing the rate of the Euro, from 0,9162 to 0,9292. If you have anticipated this change by using technical or fundamental analysis, you can buy the Euro cheaper for dollars, and then sell it back at a higher price. For example, if you choose leverage 1:100, then 99,000 dollars of the credit line, granted by the Internet broker, is added to 1000 dollars, and you buy the Euro at the price of 0.9162. As a result of this transaction we get: $ 100,000 / 0.9162 = Euro 109.146, 47.

When the rate changes (an average daily change of Euro is about 70 to 100 pips), you close the position and sell the Euro for dollars, but at the rate of 0.9292. You get 109,146. 47*0.9292 =101,418.89 dollars. Your profit is $ 1,418.89. The same transaction with leverage 1:200 would give you $2, 837.78 of profit, with leverage 1:50 the profit would be 709.45, with leverage 1:25 - 354.72.

We'd like to remind you that the higher the credit leverage, the higher is your profit if the fluctuation of the currency rate was anticipated correctly. However, if your anticipation was wrong, your losses will be bigger.

One cannot feel confident in the FOREX market without a thorough knowledge of the terms used there.

Foreign exchange quotes are a relation between currencies.

* USDCHF - the cost of $1 in Swiss Francs.
* USDJPY - the cost of $1 in Japanese yens.
* EURUSD - the cost of Euro 1 in US dollars.
* GBPUSD - the cost of 1 GBP in US dollars.

That is, quotes are expressed in the units of the second currency for a unit of the first one. For example, quote USDJPY 108,91 shows that $1 costs 108,91 Japanese yens. Quote EURUSD 0.9561 shows that 1 Euro costs 0.9561 US dollars.

The last figure in the quote is called "pip". The cost of the pip is different for every currency, and depends on the leverage and current quote.

The formula for calculating 1 pip is:

100,000/current quote without commas * K

where К=1 at leverage 1:100,
К=2 at leverage 1:200,
К=0,5 at leverage 1:50,
K=0,25 at leverage 1:25.

Examples:

USDJPY = 108.91 leverage 1:100
100.000 / 10891 х 1 = 9,18 USD

EURUSD = 0.9561 leverage1:200
100.000 / 9561 х 2 =20,92 USD

GBPUSD and EURUSD are direct quotes, i.e. when the chart goes up, GBP and EUR become more expensive, and when it goes down, the currencies become cheaper. USDCHF and USDJPY are backward quotes, and when the chart grows, prices on CHF and JPY fall, and when the chart goes down, the prices grow.

On direct quotes you buy according to ASK and sell according to BID. With backward quotes, you buy according to BID and sell according to ASK .

Trading in the FOREX market is realized in lots. When you open a position, you can choose the number of lots you want from 1 to 10. One lot equals $ 100,000. The deposit sum for one lot will vary from $500 to $2000, depending on the credit leverage you choose. Leverage is a financial mechanism that allows crediting speculative transactions with a small deposit. We give you an opportunity to choose a credit leverage in the range of 1:200 to 1:25.

In the course of trading you can fix your profit or cut off your losses according to the commands LIMIT and STOP that have been set up.

LIMIT is set up higher than the current meaning of the price.
STOP is set up lower than the current meaning of the price.

With these commands the positions is closed without additional orders when the price reaches the agreed level.

In the process of trading you can create pending positions, that will be activated when the price reaches the agreed level (open price). When creating and closing orders, a temporary delay occurs, and lasts for about 30 to 40 seconds. When you make an inquiry, you are given a real market price, which is the current price at the moment of proposal, not at the moment of inquiry.

The main terms that characterize the account:

* Deal, realization of 2 trade transactions, when currency is bought (sold), and then the reverse conversion is realized.
* Balance, the sum on the account of a client after the last transaction is conducted.
* Floating Profit, the current profit on open positions.
* Floating storage, fee for postponement of an opened position over midnight GMT.
* Equity = Balance + Floating + Floating storage.
* Margin requirement, a necessary deposit sum calculated according to the formula
* 100,000 / K + 100,000 / K,
* where K = leverage, and the number of items equals the number of open positions.
* Percentage, index of an account.
* Percentage = Equity / Margin Requirement. At Percentage lower than 50 % it's impossible to open new positions.
* Margin call, condition of an account when all opened positions are closed by the Internet broker according to current quotes. It occurs at a Percentage lower than 10%.

Please note that contrary to the majority of other companies, in PRO-FOREX.com price levels of client's orders may differ from the current price only by 5 pips. However, very rarely are orders executed worse than requests, because of the high market volatility.

What is FOREX?

FOREX (FOReign EXchange market) is an international foreign exchange market, where money is sold and bought freely. In its present condition FOREX was launched in the 1970s, when free exchange rates were introduced, and only the participants of the market determine the price of one currency against the other proceeding from supply and demand.

As far as the freedom from any external control and free competition are concerned, FOREX is a perfect market. It is also the biggest liquid financial market. According to various assessments, money masses in the market constitute from 1 to 1.5 trillion US dollars a day. (It is impossible to determine an absolutely exact number because trading is not centralized on an exchange.) Transactions are conducted all over the world via telecommunications 24 hours a day from 00:00 GMT on Monday to 10:00 pm GMT on Friday. Practically in every time zone (that is, in Frankfurt-on-Main, London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc.) there are dealers who will quote currencies.

FOREX is a more objective market, because if some of its participants would like to change prices, for some manipulative purpose, they would have to operate with tens of billions dollars. That is why any influence by a single participants in the market is practically out of the question. The superior liquidity allows the traders to open and/or close positions within a few seconds. The time of keeping a position is arbitrary and has no limits: from several seconds to many years. It depends only on your trading strategies. Although the daily fluctuations of currencies are rather insignificant, you may use the credit lines, that are accessible even to currency speculators with small capitals ($ 1,000 - 5,000), where the profit may be impressive. (You can learn more about it in the section: The main principles of trading.)

The idea of marginal trading stems from the fact that in FOREX speculative interests can be satisfied without a real money supply. This decreases overhead expenses for transferring money and gives an opportunity to open positions with a small account in US dollars, buying and selling a lot of other currencies. That is, on can conduct transactions very quickly, getting a big profit, when the exchange rates go up or down. Many speculative transactions in the international financial markets are made on the principles of marginal trading.

Margin trading is trading with a borrowed capital. Marginal trading in an exchange market uses lots. 1 lot equals approximately $100,000, but to open it it is necessary to have only from 0.5% to 4% of the sum.

For example, you have analyzed the situation in the market and come to the conclusion that the pound will go up against the dollar. You open 1 lot for buying the pound (GBP) with the margin 1% (1:1000 leverage) at the price of 1.49889 and wait for the exchange rate to go up. Some time later your expectations become true. You close the position at 1.5050 and earn 61 pips (about $ 405). For the calculation of 1 pip click here.

Everyday fluctuations of currencies constitute about 100 to 150 pips, giving FX traders an opportunity to make money on these changes.

In FOREX, it's not obligatory to buy some currency first in order to sell it later. It's possible to open positions for buying and selling any currency without actually having it. Usually Internet-brokers establish the minimum deposit such as $ 2000, for working in the FOREX market, and grant a leverage of 1:100. That is, opening the position at $100,000, a trader invests $1,000 and receives $99.000 as a credit. The major currencies traded in FOREX, are Euro (EUR), Japanese yen (JPY), British Pound (GBP), and Swiss Franc (CHF). All of them are traded against the US dollar (USD).

In order to assess the situation in the market a trader has to be able to use fundamental and/or technical analysis, as well as to make decisions in the constantly changing current of information about political and economic character. Most small and medium players in financial markets use technical analysis. Technical analysis presupposes that all the information about the market and its further fluctuations is contained in the price chain. Any factor, that has some influence on the price, be it economic, political or psychological, has already been considered by the market and included in the price. The initial data for a technical analysis are prices: the highest and the lowest prices, the price of opening and closing within a certain period of time, and the volume of transactions.
A technical analysis is founded on three suppositions:

* Movement of the market considers everything;
* Movement of prices is purposeful;
* History repeats itself.

That is, technical analysis is a statistical and mathematical analysis of previous quotes and a prognosis of coming prices.

A number of technical indicators have been installed into the PRO-CHARTS trading system. Analyzing the indicators one can come to the conclusion about further movements of the quoted currencies. For a more detailed description of the indicators, analyzing price charts and volumes of trading, click here.

Fundamental analysis is an analysis of current situations in the country of the currency, such as its economy, political events, and rumors. The country's economy depends on the rate of inflation and unemployment, on the interest rate of its Central Bank, and on tax policy. Political stability also influences the exchange rate. Policy of the Central Bank has a special role, as concentrated interventions or refusal from them greatly influence the exchange rate.

At the same time one should not consider fundamental analysis just as an analysis of the economic situation in the country itself. A far bigger role in the FOREX market belongs to the expectations of the market participants and their assessment of these expectations. Various prognoses and bulletins, issued by the participants, have a strong influence on the expectations. Very often an effect of the so-called self-filfilling prophecy occurs when market players raise or lower the exchange rates according to the prognosis. But a deep and thorough fundamental analysis is available only for big banks with a staff of professional analysts and constant access to a wide field of information.

In spite of these different approaches, both forms of analyses complement one another. Traders who act on the basis of a fundamental analysis, have to consider some technical characteristics of the market (the main rates of support, such as resistance and resale), and supporters of the technical approach to the market must track the main news (interest rates, important political events).

The main merits of the FOREX market are:

* The biggest number of participants and the largest volumes of transactions;
* Superior liquidity and speed of the market: transactions are conducted within a few seconds according to online quotes;
* The market works 24 hours a day, every working days;
* A trader can open a position for any period of time he wants;
* No fees, except for the difference between buying and selling prices;
* An opportunity to get a bigger profit that the invested sum;
* Qualified work in the FOREX market can become your main professional activity;
* You can make deals any time you like.

PayPal

PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. It serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders. PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other corporate users, for which it charges a fee. On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. Its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. The company also has significant operations in Omaha, Nebraska, Scottsdale, Arizona and Austin, Texas in the U.S.; India, Dublin, Ireland; and Berlin, Germany.

History

Beginnings

PayPal is the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com. Confinity was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company. Both Confinity and X.com launched their websites in late 1999. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999, initially as an Internet financial services company. Both companies were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Confinity's website was initially focused on reconciling beamed payments from Palm Pilots with email payments as a feature and X.com's website initially included financial services with email payments as a feature.

At Confinity, many of the initial recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, also founded by Peter Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Max Levchin. On the X.com side, Elon Musk recruited a wide range of technical and business personnel, including many that were critical to the combined company's success, such as Amy Klement, Sal Giambanco, Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, Sanjay Bhargava and Jeremy Stoppelman.

To block potentially fraudulent access by automated systems, PayPal devised a system (see CAPTCHA) of making the user enter numbers from a blurry picture, which they coined the Gausebeck-Levchin test. According to Eric M. Jackson, author of the book The PayPal Wars, PayPal invented this system now in common use; however, there is evidence AltaVista used a CAPTCHA as early as 1997, before PayPal existed.[citation needed] The neutrality of The PayPal Wars, which was self-published by Eric Jackson through his company World Ahead Publishing, funded in part by Peter Thiel, is disputed.

eBay watched the rise in volume of online payments and realized its fit with online auctions. eBay purchased Billpoint in May 1999, prior to the existence of PayPal. eBay made Billpoint the official payment system of eBay, dubbing it "eBay Payments", but cut the functionality of Billpoint by narrowing it to only payments made for eBay auctions.

For this reason, PayPal was listed in several times as many auctions as Billpoint. In February of 2000, there were approximately an average of 200,000 daily auctions advertising the PayPal service while Billpoint (in beta) had only 4,000 auctions. By April of 2000 there were more than 1,000,000 auctions promoting the PayPal service. PayPal was able to turn the corner and become the first dot-com to IPO after the September 11 attacks.

Acquisition by eBay

In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. PayPal had previously been the payment method of choice by more than fifty percent of eBay users, and the service competed with eBay’s subsidiary Billpoint. eBay has since phased out its Billpoint service in favor of retaining the PayPal brand. Most of PayPal’s major competitors have shut down or have been sold; Citibank’s c2it service closed in late 2003, and Yahoo!'s PayDirect service closed in late 2004. Western Union announced the December 2005 shut down of their BidPay service but subsequently sold it in 2006 to CyberSource Corporation. BidPay announced it will cease all operations on December 31st, 2007. Some competitors which offer some of PayPal’s services, such as Wirecard, Moneybookers, 2Checkout, CCNow and Kagi, remain in business.

PayPal’s total payment volume, the total value of transactions in Q4 2006, was US$11 billion, up 36% year over year. The company continues to focus on international growth and growth of its Merchant Services division, providing online payments for retailers off eBay.

Business today

As of the end of Q4 2006, PayPal operates in 103 markets, and it manages over 155 million accounts. PayPal allows customers to send, receive, and hold funds in 17 currencies worldwide. These currencies are the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Euro, Pound sterling, Japanese yen, Chinese renminbi, Czech Koruna, Danish krone, Hong Kong dollar, Hungarian forint, New Zealand dollar, Norwegian krone, Polish zloty, Singapore dollar, Swedish krona, and Swiss franc. PayPal operates locally in 13 countries.

Residents in 48 new markets can now use PayPal in their local markets to send money online. These new markets include Peru, Indonesia, the Philippines, Croatia, Fiji, Vietnam and Jordan. A complete list can be viewed at PayPal's website.

In China PayPal offers two kinds of accounts:

* PayPal.com accounts, for sending and receiving money to/from other PayPal.com accounts. All non-Chinese accounts are PayPal.com accounts, so these accounts may be used to send money internationally.
* PayPal.cn accounts, for sending and receiving money to and from other PayPal.cn accounts.

It is impossible to send money between PayPal.cn accounts and PayPal.com accounts, so PayPal.cn accounts are effectively unable to make international payments. For PayPal.cn, the only supported currency is the renminbi.

Although PayPal's corporate headquarters are located in San Jose, PayPal’s operations center is located near Omaha, Nebraska, where the company employs more than 2,000 people as of 2007. PayPal’s international headquarters is located in Dublin, Ireland. The company also recently opened a technology center in Scottsdale, Arizona.

PayPal's headquarters in San Jose were hit by a small bomb on the evening of Halloween 2006 which shattered a window but caused no injuries.

Bank status

In the United States, PayPal is licensed as a money transmitter on a state-by-state basis.[citation needed] Although PayPal is not a bank, the company is still subject to many of the rules and regulations governing the financial industry including Regulation E consumer protections and the USA PATRIOT Act.[citation needed] However, on May 15, 2007, PayPal announced that it would move its European operations from the UK to Luxembourg, commencing July 2, 2007 as PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A.[citation needed] This would be as a Luxembourg entity regulated as a bank by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the Luxembourg equivalent of the FSA.[citation needed] PayPal Luxembourg will then provide the PayPal service throughout the European Union (EU).

Safety and protection policies

The PayPal Buyer Protection Policy states that customers may file a buyer complaint within 45 days if they did not receive an item or if the item they purchased was significantly not as described. If the buyer used a credit card, they might get a refund via charge back from their credit card company.

According to PayPal, it protects sellers in a limited fashion via the Seller Protection Policy. In general the Seller Protection Policy is intended to protect the seller from certain kinds of chargebacks or complaints if seller meets certain conditions including proof of delivery to the buyer. PayPal states the Seller Protection Policy is "designed to protect sellers against claims by buyers of unauthorized payments and against claims of non-receipt of any merchandise". Note that this contrasts with the consumer protection they claim to offer. This policy should be read carefully before assuming protection. In particular the Seller Protection Policy includes a list of "Exclusions" which itself includes "Intangible goods", "Claims for receipt of goods 'not as described'" and "Total reversals over the annual limit". There are also other restrictions in terms of the sale itself, the payment method and the destination country the item is shipped to (simply having a tracking mechanism is not sufficient to guarantee the Seller Protection Policy is in effect).

Security

Security key

In early 2007, PayPal introduced an optional security key to its users. This adds an additional layer of protection when logging into a PayPal or eBay account. Once a user enters their login ID and password, they are prompted to press a button on the small security key, then enter the six-digit number to complete the login process. There is a one-time US$5 charge for this device, with no ongoing fees; however, business accounts get them free of charge.

Phishing

PayPal has developed substantial anti-Phishing resources, for identifying and reporting phishing, and offers its US customers free credit monitoring.

Entrepreneurship by former employees

A number of companies have been started and funded by former PayPal employees. This trend prompted The New York Times to publish a story entitled "It Pays to Have Pals in Silicon Valley" that analyzes the connections between several PayPal employees who went on to become influential.

* LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffman, a former VP at PayPal.
* Facebook received its first angel investment from Peter Thiel.
* Clarium Capital Management is a hedge fund run by Peter Thiel. Principal partners at Clarium include Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, both of whom were among the earliest employees at PayPal.
* Palantir Technologies was founded by Nathan Gettings, who developed PayPal's anti-fraud models. Palantir received funding from Peter Thiel.
* Slide was founded by Max Levchin, Jared Kopf, and former PayPal board member Scott Banister.
* Yelp was founded by Jeremy Stoppelmann, former VP of Engineering at PayPal, and Russ Simmons, one of the first employees at PayPal. Yelp is funded by Max Levchin.
* YouTube (now owned by Google) was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, all of whom were early employees at PayPal. YouTube is funded by Sequoia Capital. Roelof Botha, the former CFO of PayPal, is a partner of Sequoia Capital who sits on YouTube's board of directors.
* Room 9 Entertainment, which produced the movie Thank You for Smoking, was founded by David O. Sacks, who founded PayPal's Product Group and later served as Chief Operating Officer (COO).
* Geni.com was also founded by David O. Sacks.
* SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, who founded X.com and served as the CEO following its merger with PayPal.
* Fraudwall Technologies is run by Ken Miller, who was VP of Risk Management at PayPal and the architect of PayPal's anti-fraud system.
* Tesla Motors' principal owner and Chairman of the Board is Elon Musk.

Criticism

In September 2005, the owner of the website Something Awful, Richard Kyanka, set up an account to collect donations for Hurricane Katrina, to be given to the Red Cross. Due to the high rate at which donations were made, the account was automatically frozen, and Kyanka criticized the time and difficulty involved in getting PayPal's customer service to unfreeze the account. In response to the concerns of Something Awful members over the charity used by Paypal, United Way, Kyanka finally opted to have the money refunded to the donors so that they could donate directly to their charities of choice.

Litigation

In March 2002, two PayPal account holders separately sued the company for alleged violations of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) and California law. Most of the allegations concerned PayPal's dispute resolution procedures. The two lawsuits were merged into one class action lawsuit (In re PayPal litigation). An informal settlement was reached in November 2003, and a formal settlement was signed on June 11, 2004. The settlement requires that PayPal change its business practices (including changing its dispute resolution procedures to make them EFTA-compliant), as well as making a US$9.25 million payment to members of the class. PayPal denied any wrongdoing.

In August 2002, Craig Comb and others filed a class action against PayPal in Craig Comb, et al. v. PayPal, Inc.. They sued for alleged mishandling of customer accounts and customer services, with regards to PayPal's user agreement. Allegations included restricting deposited funds for up to 180 days until disputes are resolved, forcing customers to arbitrate their disputes under the American Arbitration Association's guidelines (a costly procedure), and requiring users to file claims individually, restricting class action suits. The court stated that "the User Agreement and arbitration clause are substantively unconscionable under California law" and ruled in favor of Comb.

PayPal has also been involved in a number of other lawsuits.

Here's How To Reach The Top

The quickest, surest way to earn a living online is
through affiliate marketing.

It's a simple fact. But not everyone knows about it.

And for those who do try to succeed with affiliate
marketing, a great majority of them realize that what
is quick and sure does not necessarily mean that it's
easy. The truth is, affiliate marketing is a field
that requires skills.

The First Step Has Been Taken...
And skills are developed by acquiring the right
knowledge, first and foremost.

The problem with the resources available online is
that they assume too much.

They assume that the readers (who are students in
this case) know what those alleged tomes of information
are talking about.

They teach you PPC advertising under the impression
that you know what PPC stands for. They teach you about
follow-up systems without explaining the need for
following up. They teach you how easy it is to create
web pages on the fly without taking into consideration
your proficiency when it comes to web authoring.

This sad state of affairs has made it difficult for
novice Internet marketers to make it big in the world
of affiliate marketing. There simply isn't any perfect
entry-level compendium of the right information needed
to succeed as an affiliate.

That is, until Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. I
was released.

Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. I carried the subtitle
"The Basics Of The Fastest Moneymaking Opportunity In The
Digital World." It was an appropriate tag.


The Problem...

But Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. I is only made up
of so many pages. Even if it included all the proven
techniques that would transform its readers into instant
affiliate marketing superstars, it failed in one
department...

It only discussed the strategies of the present...

... the strategies of the NOW.
Sure, with the tactics that Affiliate Marketing Success,
Vol. I has efficiently delineated, you can leave your
competition behind and make them eat your dust.

But for how long will you stay ahead?

What if they ride the waves caused by a new generation
of affiliate marketing strategies before you do?

Nothing stays the same forever. The tactics that serve
us well today may very well become obsolete tomorrow.
The winds of change are perpetually upon us.

The question is this...

Are we ready for them?

Get ready for Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. II



Web 2.0: The Face Of Change

Web 2.0 was a term coined by O'Reilly Media way back in
2004. It refers to the new generation of online
methodologies that are focused on online collaboration
and sharing between Internet users. In Tim O'Reilly's
own words:

"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer
industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform,
and an attempt to understand the rules for success on
that new platform. Chief among those rules is this:
Build applications that harness network effects to get
better the more people use them. (This is what I've
elsewhere called 'harnessing collective intelligence.').”

As an affiliate marketer you need to know what this means
to you. That's why there's a volume II of the widely
successfull Affiliate Marketing Success Vol I.

Here's the LINK