PayPalDave - 9:55 pm on Jul 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

[disclaimer: yes i *do* work for paypal]

this site has a good comparison of various merchant processors:
[merchantcompare.com...]

it doesn't have the new PayPal fees up yet, but even with the current rate schedule i think it shows PayPal fees are lower than most people realize for card-not-present (internet/telephone) rates. also, many people forget about the additional setup and monthly fees that are tacked on with other processors, or also the foreign exchange fees for international processing.

for folks doing very high volume (>$20-50K per month), it's possible there are a few alternatives that are cheaper, however with the new rates we're rolling out even there i think we're pretty darn competitive.

anyway, not that we're trying to compete only on price -- actually we offer a lot of other value-added services (integrated shipping with UPS/USPS, order tracking and reporting, eBay intergation) in addition to just payment processing.

- dave mcclure