The move is unfortunate if you like to give artists and inventors a helping hand, but it's not all that shocking in light of crowdfunding's riskiness. Kickstarter notes that about 9 percent of its projects never deliver, for example -- if the failure rate is similar or worse on those crowdfunding sites that take PayPal, that's a lot of potential refunds. We've asked PayPal for its official reasoning, but it might simply be a matter of wanting to keep costs down.

Update: Sure enough, PayPal tells us that the policy change reflects the "risks and uncertainties" of crowdfunding. You can read its full statement below.