Linden Lab Annouces Hike in Paypal/Skrill Transaction Fees, "Faster Credit Processing"

For those who use Paypal or Skrill to buy their virtual currency from Linden Lab, their fees are going to go up. On Monday, it was announced in the official Second Life blog that there would be some "Upcoming changes to fees" starting on April 5.

In addition to taking time, processing credit and paying real money to users’ PayPal and Skrill accounts incurs costs to Linden Lab. Each transaction actually costs us more than the $1 (USD) fee we have been charging. To address that and in light of the significant investments we’ve made to improve the related systems and processes, we will be making some adjustments to the fee structure, beginning next month.
 
As of April 5, 2016, instead of charging a flat fee of $1 (USD) per transaction, we will charge a fee of 1.5% of the transaction value, with a minimum fee of $3 (USD) and a maximum of $15 (USD). Additionally, the fee for purchasing L$ on the LindeX will increase 10¢, from $0.30 (USD) to $0.40 (USD) per transaction.

But it wasn't all bad news. Linden Lab stated it has been making some changes to how transactions of money is made. So people will be able to sell Linden dollars for real-life currency from the Lab at a faster time. The Lab is saying most of their purchases of Linden dollars for real ones will be completed within two days, though some will take longer.

We’re happy to announce that we will significantly improve how quickly we’re able to process a majority of credit requests. Based on current data, we estimate that the upgrades we’ve made will allow approximately 75% of process credit requests to be completed within 2 business days. 
 
For a minority of requests, the process may still take 5 business days. Because we’re dealing with sending real money to users around the world, we may require additional information and perform other processes that could impact the time needed. A good rule of thumb is that the better we know you as a customer, the more likely it is we’ll be able to quickly process your credit requests.

On the SL Universe forums, one store owner mentioned getting an email from Linden Lab asking about their source of income. It was suggested the email was related to the changes in how transactions are carried out, though there was no way to confirm it.

To read the blog post in it's entirety, Click here.