A Little Help With PayPal Please
It seems almost every day I get an email or a tweet asking me if my company, Cocard Synergy, has a better solution for accepting credit cards than PayPal. I have reviewed the fees of PayPal merchants accounts many times but I am always left feeling like I am not receiving the full story from PayPal reports. So instead of trying to figure out PayPal on my own I am inviting you who have a PayPal account to leave comments below and share your thoughts, praises and complaints about their fees and service. This way I’ll know for sure if what we have is better than what PayPal offers and so will all the people that ask about it.
So…what do you think of PayPal? What has your experience been with them? How about their rates and fees? Come on, leave a comment blow with your thoughts!
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Paypal was a nightmare integration with my old Miva platform. Switching to Miva’s merchant account was seamless + saved sales.
Hi Rob,
Have used Paypal numerous times when shopping online & have found it very easy to use! I’m interested in this topic as I’m considering using them for my website that will launch sometime in January. I’ll be very interested to see what others have to say!
Best regards,
Victoria
Hi Rob
I use Paypal in order to accept credit cards as I don’t have enough transactions to make having a Merchant account viable. I also like the facility of paying people who also have a Paypal account just by typing in their email address.
I find the charges OK – I guess it’s a case of so far, so good.
Regards
Louise
Up front full disclosure: I work for ProStores – eBay’s all-in-one hosted (off-eBay) Web store solution. Naturally, PayPal’s payment processing solutions are integrated with our product.
I think as indicated here there seems to be more than a bit of confusion about the various solutions PayPal offers for accepting payments through an online store.
The one most folks are familiar with is PayPal as a payment method – where a buyer clicks on a PayPal mark or button and goes to PayPal’s site to complete a transaction – this is called Website Payments Standard.
The benefit of Standard is that there’s no monthly fee, no credit app, and it’s easy to get started – especially if you’re using a cart or storefront solution that has it pre-integrated.
The potential down side from an independent merchant’s perspective is that your buyer is being sent off of your site to pay. Still – providing options like PayPal – an increasingly popular payment method that keeps the buyer’s financial info confidential – has been shown to boost sales.
PayPal also offers a combination merchant account and gateway in their Website Payments Pro product – the buyer experience here is the same as with any other on-site credit card payment experience.
And finally PayPal offers a stand-alone gateway product called Payflow Pro – same typical on-site payment experience here as with any other gateway.
There’s a good comparison and summary of fees of the first two here.
Hope this was helpful.
I’m thinking of using PayPal to help with some fundraising through sponsorships and pre-sales that might be difficult to set up through my current distributor (Nimbit.com helps me with credit card sales online and POS). I’m in the same boat as Louise in that I don’t feel that I have enough transactions to make having a Merchant account viable.
In the process of doing some research, I came across this article that covers 5 alternatives to PayPal: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0802/gallery.paypal_alternatives.fsb/index.html
However, I wasn’t persuaded by any of them. Mainly it felt overly time-consuming to study the ones that might be suitable for me.
I would be happy to hear the results of your research!
I have been using Paypal for 4 years and quite satisfied with it. PayPal is simpler and takes less time than writing and mailing checks. And unlike checks that could take many days to clear, PayPal transactions clear very fast.