File Sharing Company Seafile Drops PayPal in Favor of Bitcoin

Seafile is a file sharing company operating out of Germany. That is not out of the ordinary, except they were forced by PayPal to comply with stricter KYC rules. The company decided not to do so and promptly saw their PayPal account suspended. As a result, Seafile is now accepting Bitcoin payments through BitPay.

Seafile Bites The Bullet And Picks Bitcoin

We live in a very strange world of payments these days. PayPal, while one of the most commonly accepted payment methods in the world, sometimes oversteps its boundaries. Such was the case with Seafile, as they asked the file sharing company to ensure there was no illegal content hosted or shared through their platform.

That in itself is not invasive by any means, and the company would have complied with that. However, PayPal’s request went much further, and they forced Seafile to log the IP address, browser information, and location of every user accessing any file on their platform. That was not to the liking of the company, and the dispute with PayPal escalated from there on out.

After a lot of back-and-forth communication, PayPal decided to give Seafile an ultimatum. If the company did not comply with their rules within a handful of business days, they would no longer be able to accept PayPal payments. As Seafile had no intention to comply with these ludicrous demands, the PayPal option was removed from their website.

Finding a new globally accepted payment method is not an easy feat, though. Bitcoin is one of the only options available to companies. Due to its decentralized nature and no central oversight, there is no one to determine who can or can’t accept Bitcoin payments for whatever reason.

Seafile decided to take the plunge and signed up for a merchant account courtesy of BitPay. The company is now accepting Bitcoin payments for all of its services. This new payment method is enabled for both new and returning customers. It is possible other payment methods will make their way to the platform in the coming months, though.

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