Comments on: PayPal as a serious ecommerce tool

By: Clarence Coggins

Clarence Coggins — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:25:17 +0000

I haven’t had any problems with paypal. I have heard the horror stories and I use several different pay processors. I feel that their anti-mlm/network marketing stance is really oppressive. But I do my best to protect my PayPal account because it is so fast in paying. I also like the debit card that comes with the merchant account. That has been truly helpful. So I’ll be keeping PayPal but I keep my eye out for other solutions.

By: Cintia

Cintia — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:47:38 +0000

the best strategy is give customer as many payment options as possible. paypal, google checkout, creditcard, moneybookers, even egold.

By: eBay Elsewhere : links for 23rd March 2008 : TameBay

eBay Elsewhere : links for 23rd March 2008 : TameBay — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:39:21 +0000

[...] John Jansch from Duct Tape Marketing recommends PayPal as “a serious ecommerce tool”. As indeed it is; what a long way its come since people used to say that offering PayPal on your website made you look like an amateur. [...]

By: Nan Palmero

Nan Palmero — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 04:42:54 +0000

You’re right that website payment pro keeps a more consistent brand look. On the other hand, Google Checkout is less expensive when billing less than $100k per month. I’d have to see what data there is showing how important it is to customers to have a consistent brand look during checkout.

By: Ben Smith

Ben Smith — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:58:59 +0000

Nan,

Don’t you think Google Checkout is sort of a different thing? I mean with Websites Payments Pro you can process credit cards without ever sending the customer to PayPal or anything (ie. you have complete control of the transaction). It seems to me GC is a good add on, but shouldn’t be the only option available to a customer.

By: Nan Palmero

Nan Palmero — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:47:27 +0000

What do you think about using google checkout – http://checkout.google.com? Also, Google Checkout is an excellent opportunity for non-profits as they are processing charges for free until 2009 – https://checkout.google.com/seller/npo/

By: Jacob Morgan

Jacob Morgan — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:17:32 +0000

I have had to setup a merchant account for a client in the past (more of a favor really). It really is a pain to get everything set up from scratch. I have not had any problems with paypal thus far (and neither has my client) but after reading the comments on here I am also starting to wonder. I don’t have any experience with
2checkout but I’m certainly going to look into it!

Great post and very informative comments, thanks guys.

By: Ben Smith

Ben Smith — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:38:59 +0000

I have to say we have not had any of the problems described above. We have a websites payments pro account that we use to process the monthly charges for our online services. We also have an option for people to pre pay their accounts with PayPal Express.

So to say that we run a large number of transactions through PayPal would be a drastic understatement, and I have had nothing but great success with the system. I already transfer money every few days, but not because I didn’t trust PayPal (because of interest – which is non trivial with an online business of our size).

I guess I would be curios to see what the specific issues arose that caused these issues. Was the person selling a product that was against PayPal’s terms of service? Or are most of these issues relating to one person selling something on e-bay to another? I imagine issues could arise much more easily there because you have an used product that the buyer’s expectations may be different then the seller’s. That doesn’t seem as likely in a tradition retailer (or especially someone like us who sells an online service).