UK Government To Use PayPal For Identity Assurance 74
judgecorp writes "A UK government contract has confirmed earlier reports that British citizens will have the option to use PayPal to accredit themselves for public services such as the new Universal Credit benefit system. Using PayPal might be a public relations goof, as PayPal's parent eBay is notoriously clever at avoiding UK taxes, recently paying only £1.2 million on profit of £789 million (around 0.15 percent)."
Re:All banks do it. (Score:5, Informative)
PayPal (Europe) S.Ã r.l. et Cie, S.C.A. is duly licenced as a Luxembourg credit institution in the sense of Article 2 of the law of 5 April 1993 on the financial sector as amended and is under the prudential supervision of the Luxembourg supervisory authority, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier, with registered office in L-1150 Luxembourg.
Re:PayPal is NOT a bank (Score:4, Informative)
Not just Europe -- the SWIFT system is used internationally, you can look up US banks on the same website. It only identifies the institution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9362 [wikipedia.org]
An IBAN identifies an account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_13616 [wikipedia.org]
On my online banking (British account), if I were to transfer money to a US account I need the SWIFT code and the account number (and addresses). To transfer money to an Austrian account I need the IBAN and (for some reason) the SWIFT code, but not any other numbers.
(Only the local number is printed on my cheques -- of which I've used one in the last four years -- but the SWIFT code and IBAN are printed on all my statements, and also online.)