On-Line Payment Processors

[Platypus]

I wish to add to a customer website the option to take on-line payments. I've noodled with this before and Paypal looked like a good option (very easy to implement as far as I could see). This would be for a non-shipping item.

Question: are there any other options? Which would you use, and why?

Anyone know just how widespread PayPal is? I know they claim zillions of accounts, but anyone any insight into how many "people in the street" have a PayPal account?

I remember that DP said the Google Payments didn't like setups which billed for services rather than shippable items.

Any other caveats?

[Fred Bloggs]

Folk can pay by paypal even if they do not have a paypal account set up. Those folks without paypal accounts can still pay by credit/debit card. It looks a bit expensive for the trader to pay the paypal charges, but I think that if you look at alternatives, they're competitive I reckon. One slight barrier could be that non-paypal account holders may not realise that they can purchase via paypal without opening a full paypal account and not actually buy as a result.

[Platypus]

Paypal fees, so I found, are:
Purchase payments received (monthly) Fee per transaction
£0.00 GBP - £1,500.00 GBP 3.4% + £0.20 GBP

So for each £10 received (this is the item price) PayPal would take 54 pence.

I could live with that.

Does that look about right? Or did I miss something, such as is there a monthly fixed fee too, to have a seller account?

[xoggoth]

Re last but one comment. Just tell the customer the Paypal options on your own site.

Paypal is particularly good for occasional overseas purchases, you pay a fee to the likes of Worldpay for every extra currency but with Paypal you can take payment from practically anywhere. There is also an option for email payment which is good if, say, they are requesting a lower price as a wholesaler. The customer mails the order to you, you send invoice and payment request and if they want to proceed the customer follows the simple instructions on the email they get.

Fee is more expensive than Worldpay etc and gets higher for currency conversion but then you don't pay an annual charge of £165 upwards + £x for every extra currency.

[xoggoth]

Only a slight problem I find with using you own payment page using Paypal is that the zip code/postcode field to send is numeric. Must be some way round that, I didn't waste much time on it.

[Durbs]

Does that look about right? Or did I miss something, such as is there a monthly fixed fee too, to have a seller account?

No, there is no monthly fee for the standard seller account, its just a % of each transaction.

You can go for Paypal Payments Pro where the customer fills in their card details on your own site in the 'traditional' way and is not redirected to Paypal. There is a monthly fee for this though and its more work to implement (you'll need an SSL cert etc).

Other options i use are Worldpay, Authorize.net and Moneybookers.

[AtW]

Paypal is tulip. We are going to move away from it, however for starting up it might be ok - as long as you don't charge large amounts and also don't do subscriptions.

Paypal Payments Pro maybe require you to be PCI DSS compliant.

[Durbs]

Paypal is tulip.

They are also heavily biased towards the buyer. I sell downloadable apps via Paypal and have had numerous issues where Paypal send an OK response for a sale (so i release the download to the buyer on the basis of this, can't do otherwise) then contact me 2 weeks later saying it was in fact a dodgy credit card or hacked Paypal account used to make the purchase through them. Their email informing me of this also contains text to the effect that they are a big company and i will repay the money straight away or they will break my knees.

Have argued the toss a few times saying surely it's Barclaycard etc's problem but no, its mine apparently and I'm liable every time someone buys my apps with a dodgy card.

Saying that though, Paypal itself is very hassle free, its just their customer service and seller protection for intangible goods that is toss.

[downsouth]

I use a flavour of Paypal and NoChex to handle payments on my sites, if im honest most of my customers prefer Nochex.

[VectraMan]

They are also heavily biased towards the buyer. I sell downloadable apps via Paypal and have had numerous issues where Paypal send an OK response for a sale (so i release the download to the buyer on the basis of this, can't do otherwise) then contact me 2 weeks later saying it was in fact a dodgy credit card or hacked Paypal account used to make the purchase through them. Their email informing me of this also contains text to the effect that they are a big company and i will repay the money straight away or they will break my knees.

I think you'll find the same is true of everybody. Plan B's partner-co had that a lot with Worldpay, and Worldpay would charge for each one. They've now ditched Worldpay and Nochex to go PayPal only. Nochex were okay, and offered more guarantees, but only for UK customers and only up to £100 IIRC.