ASIC Sues PayPal: Alleges Unfair Terms for Small Aussie Businesses

<p>The Aussie financial market watchdog, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), is taking the local arm of PayPal to court, alleging that standard contract terms of the digital payments giant are unfair to small business customers.
</p><p>ASIC Calls PayPal’s Contract Unfair
</p><p>According to the announcement today (Thursday), PayPal Australia Pty Limited provided small businesses a time period of 60 days to notify any errors or discrepancies in fees that the payment platform is charging. If the 60-day deadline is passed, the small businesses have to accept those fees to be accurate.
</p><p>The <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/tag/asic/">Aussie regulator </a>alleged the terms as unfair since it allows PayPal to retain overcharged or incorrectly charged fees if the small businesses failed to point out the fees within 60 days of appearing in the account statement.
</p><p>ASIC pointed out that the contract term causes a significant imbalance in the rights and <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/terms/o/obligations/">obligations</a> of small businesses. The lawsuit additionally highlighted that it is not reasonably necessary to protect PayPal’s legitimate interests, and the terms would cause detriment to PayPal business account holders.
</p><p>Will There Be Any Retrospective Action?
</p><p>PayPal Australia added the alleged unfair contract term initially in 2010, which was applied to standard form consumer contracts for financial products and services. On 12 November 2016, the <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/terms/p/payments/">payments</a> company expanded it to include small business contracts.
</p><p>There were about 608,275 business account contracts between <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/tag/paypal/">PayPal</a> and active users in Australia at the end of June.
</p><p>The regulator is now seeking a declaration that the term is void, along with injunctions and corrective orders.
</p><p>“ASIC has commenced this action to protect the interests of small businesses,” said Sarah Court, the Deputy Chair at ASIC. “We allege this term is unfair because it allows PayPal to escape the consequences of its own errors in overcharging small businesses, and places additional burdens on small businesses to detect and correct charging errors.”</p><p>Meanwhile, PayPal will <a href="https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/paypal-halts-uk-crypto-sales-fcas-stricter-rules-take-center-stage/">suspend its crypto services in the United Kingdom</a> from October for a minimum of three months due to regulations in the country.</p>

This article was written by Arnab Shome at www.financemagnates.com.