is paypal accounts the absolute best way to process payments and junk if your trying to open up an online business for yourself?

3/28/2007 4:51:04 PM

no, but they do have pretty good merchant services. paypal is certainly the easiest way to get a decent payment processing solution, but there are slightly cheaper alternatives, namely Costco/NOVA

3/28/2007 5:00:58 PM

paypals a good way to start until you get a steady stream of credit card purchases then you'll want to set up your own merchant account with each credit card company. that's a hassle lemme tell ya so don't go there unless you are really sure.

3/28/2007 5:31:02 PM

^paypal does merchant services, as I just mentioned. Paypal is not just email payments.

and it's not really that hard to setup

3/28/2007 5:37:29 PM

merchant accounts are better.

instead of "PAYPAL * PENIS_SALES" on your customer's credit card statement
you just see "PENIS SALES"

and the rates are usually cheaper. and it looks more professional.

3/28/2007 5:41:22 PM

^uh, what part of PAYPAL OFFERS MERCHANT SERVICES, is not clear? You can get a FULL merchant account THROUGH PAYPAL.

And amazingly their rates are damn close to as cheap as you can get. Unless you are doing pretty good volume, they are hard to beat.

Jeeze people

[Edited on March 28, 2007 at 5:47 PM. Reason : .]

3/28/2007 5:47:02 PM

Volume will be minimal.

thnx.

3/28/2007 9:04:43 PM

^^ but doesn't Paypal take a significant cut where he could go to normal merchant accounts and bypass a middleman? Not saying that the service isn't useful but why pay someone for something you can set up yourself.

3/29/2007 12:11:39 AM

Quote :

"And amazingly their rates are damn close to as cheap as you can get."

message_topic.aspx?topic=467176

Quote :

"PayPal gave us the best deal we could find with a 1.9% discounted rate and 0.3% transaction fee but we're doing about $1m in volume in a few months. we had to call/fax them to get this special rate - usually it's about 2.3% or so they were the best we found without a rolling reserve, initial deposit, frozen assets, and especially no monthly fee. they had the easiest system for refunds through their web-based control panel as well. integration into the site was fairly easy - we didn't want to store any CC information on our end because of server security and liability issues that would result so we forward users to PayPal and the PayPal page is easily customizable and will return them to your site with whatever variables you need to pass to and from PayPal. although they are really strict for security reasons like you can only use the credit card once to make a purchase within a short amount of time. if you want to make multiple purchases with the same card, you have to either get them in the same order, or wait. they have also been picky about their "investigations" and locked up some of our funds for 2 weeks while they investigate certain transactions. they're all cleared and released but it's sort of a pain in the ass. if you want to use an eCheck, you have to sign up for a PayPal account first - that was somewhat of a downside."

3/29/2007 11:23:15 AM

You can use another 3rd party payment processor if you aren't ready to get a merchant account, like 2checkout.com

3/29/2007 1:53:58 PM

Quote :

"but doesn't Paypal take a significant cut where he could go to normal merchant accounts and bypass a middleman? Not saying that the service isn't useful but why pay someone for something you can set up yourself."

nope. Paypal IS a normal merchant account. Most merchant providers will charge from 2.3-2.7% +20-35 cents per transaction.

3/29/2007 2:52:56 PM