SlowPal – PayPal reports on steroids
The guys at Shoply have developed a new app, SlowPal, to help PayPal users manage their transactions. It was first spotted by Tamebay reader Jimbo a few weeks back but it’s now ready for use. Slowpal is a simple web app which imports your transaction data and makes it super quick and easy to search, browse and filter. Slowpal uses official Paypal API’s to access your data and has read-only permissions with your Paypal account.
Slowpal was built initially as an internal tool, Liad of Shoply told me, to make it quicker and easier for Shoply to manage their own transactions. It turned out so good that they decided to make it public so others can benefit from the time savings it offers.
Through managing the Shoply marketplace they’ve had to deal with tens of thousands of transactions running through Paypal. Searching, browsing, filtering transaction reports on PayPal aren’t the easiest processes to manage and often take some time to generate. SlowPal speeds everything up as well as adding real insights and business intelligence to help you grow your business.
SlowPal is PayPal reports on steroids, and yes it’s now all SSL and ready to use
Dan Wilson says
1:29 am on 23/05/2012
Slowpal? It is a pretty bad name, no? Or am I missing something?
Slowpal says
12:53 pm on May 23rd, 2012
We chose it tongue-in-cheek
ebuyerfb says
5:01 am on 23/05/2012
No it isn’t. As I stated before when it was first posted on TameBay it is not using SSL for log in. The only way to log in using SSL is to provide them false credentials first and then it will direct you to a secure login page that uses SSL. It is currently impossible to sign in securely to the site since going to https://slowpal.com redirects to http://slowpal.com. They save a few CPU cycles and you send your password in the clear.
To make matters a bit worse their cookies aren’t secure. This means that I could log in through their one SSL log in page but the moment I hit the insecure front page I’m at risk of having my session hijacked. Anyone with a packet sniffer on the network suddenly has access to my cookie which is not encrypted and can duplicate it. Then the hacker now has read-only access to my PayPal account. And very quick access at that.
And then to do exactly to SlowPal what they do to PayPal someone needs to create a clone site. Call it SecureSlowPal. Copy their logo (violating any possible trademark they have on SlowPal) but add the word “Secure” to the front. The site would use proper security. Then create a Facebook page explaining how it is secure as opposed to the original SlowPal and post links to sites where users like me complain they lack SSL for log in. Finally it would use a cartoon lock for all the loading screens.
What is shocking though is, now that I know this is developed by Shoply, I went to Shoply and see they have the same issue except SSL appears to be completely nonexistent for the entire domain. You can’t sign up or log in securely on that site no matter what you try.
These guys clearly don’t care much about security and I’d avoid using their products until they get their act together. By the way eBay requires its Open eBay developers to follow these security procedures so I don’t know why PayPal would let this pass assuming they’ve actually gone through the equivalent of eBay’s App check process. I have a hunch they haven’t. Then there is the whole very obvious trademark issue which is likely to prevent that from ever happening.
Slowpal says
1:05 pm on May 23rd, 2012
we care deeply about security.
we are looking into your concerns right now.
will update this comment with further information shortly.
Slowpal says
10:47 pm on May 23rd, 2012
Both the issues you mentioned have been taken care of.
Gary says
7:41 am on 23/05/2012
My reaction also regarding the name.
Why not call it FastPal?
It is inevitable that somebody will now develop a service with this name so SlowPal should register it quick!
ebuyerfb says
8:01 am on May 23rd, 2012
You are about 12 years too late for that. The domain fastpal.com was registered in August 2000.
Gary says
8:34 am on 23/05/2012
So it is. A google search revealed nothing so the domain holders meta words are rubbish. It is only a holding domain though with plenty of alternative .’s available. Why is .com so important?
And on the face of it there is still nothing to stop the trademark FastPal being registered.
Jimbo says
1:23 pm on 23/05/2012
Why can’t PayPal sort it out so that reports run a bit better. Surely (fast) reports should be an integral part of the service they offer?
st georges dragon says
2:53 pm on 23/05/2012
whats the point in finding a transaction when you can do bugger all with it[refund] unless you go back to paypal
slowpal says
10:48 pm on May 23rd, 2012
Browsing transactions without delays offers us a lot of value. We can definitely add ‘write’ permissions to make refunds etc, but were apprehensive as people may not want us to have that kind of access over their accounts.
we thought to start with read-only permissions and take it from there as time goes on.
st georges dragon says
7:14 am on May 24th, 2012
a great improvement in speed though if you can do it why cant paypal, to be honest once we have their money we never look again unless it goes wrong and they want their money back
ebuyerfb says
7:36 am on May 25th, 2012
They can do it for two reasons:
1) That’s all SlowPal does. I would assume that PayPal uses the same databases for reports that they use for everything else. PayPal would need to duplicate everything and keep it in sync at significant cost and resources to be able to provide speed improvements like this.
2) Practically no one uses SlowPal (compared to PayPal’s hundreds of millions of users).
st georges dragon says
8:40 am on 24/05/2012
and if you use ebays blackthorne software the paypal transaction id with a clickable link is available direct from the sales info
ebuyerfb says
7:32 am on May 25th, 2012
Blackthorne costs extra.