After freeing several croudfunding accounts, PayPal acknowledged that it is about time it revises its policies to be friendlier to that business model.
In the last few weeks, PayPal has frozen accounts for crowdfunded games such as SkullGirls and Yatagarasu: Attack on Cataclysm. Those accounts were unfrozen eventually, but not without sucking developers' time and effort and hurting the service's reputation in the process.
"It's clear that our existing policies and processes aren't working quite right for this particular fundraising model," blogged Tomer Barel, PayPal's vice president of risk management,. "We are now in the midst of overhauling our policies in this space."
"We're talking to the major crowdfunding players that we work with to put in place a permanent solution that avoids unnecessary account limitations. But making this work for all stakeholders -- contributors, entrepreneurs, crowdfunding sites and us -- is pretty complicated..."
"PayPal has a responsibility to ensure that the system remains secure, in compliance with Government regulations around the world, and that consumers who contribute to these campaigns understand where their money is going."
In the meanwhile, PayPal is assigning senior members of its risk management team to oversee crowdfunding campaigns on a case-by-case basis until the new policy is finalized.