Not Accepting PayPal -- Should I?

Am I missing potential sales?

[martyt]

I run a small niche e-commerce site that accepts the full range of credit card payments, but we don't accept PayPal on the web site (or at least, we don't advertise it -- I have a PayPal account for the occasional eBay item that we sell). We haven't had any requests from customers wanting to pay via PayPal, so there doesn't seem to be much demand for it.

But could I be losing potential customers who think PayPal is nirvana for safe e-commerce payments? Would it be worth the (fairly trivial) effort to hook PayPal into my site?

[mattglet]

i'm sure there are people that are out there that think PayPal is close to the end-all, be-all. if the effort of putting PayPal on your site is trivial, then i think you should just go ahead and accept it. if it can't hurt, then why not try?

-Matt

[choster]

Paypal safer than my American Express? That sounds very strange to me.

[dmorison]

One thing to bear in mind is do you _want_ to take PayPal - it mainly depends on volume and purchase price. PayPal's terms and conditions aren't funny at all; and you might want to consider how long you wish to have your liquidity (cash) held under those T's and C's.

I used to accept PayPal for a low volume, low cost service; and saw about 10% or so take that payment option - but I never had more than a couple of hundred pounds tied up in the PayPal account before transferring to my UK bank account.

If you do decide to take PayPal, one thing to bear in mind is how you promote this on your site. Many people know that PayPal can also be used to pay you by credit card; so if they see that you accept "Mastercard" on your homepage, and also see the PayPal logo, they may assume that you use PayPal for everything and be put off buying from you because of that.

Here's some wording that might work:

"We accept payment online by credit or debit card via [Insert Payment Service Provider name]. You may also pay directly from your PayPal account."

[Algebrator]

In my experience the answer is "yes". Orders went up (not just the redistribution from CC buyers) by about 15%.
While on the subject, similar thing happened when I started accepting online checke (+10%)
I have some bad experience with online checks (lots of NSF, but still worth its while), and absolutely no bad experience with paypal. My average order is $50.

[Brett_Tabke]

> Paypal safer than my American Express?

yes. Several thousand transactions on everything from dollar items to thousand dollar items - never an occasion of fraud that we had to eat.

[grandpa]

I use PayPal on my site, and accept most credit cards. No e-checks yet. A small percentage of my customers use PayPal religiously.

On occasion, I will manually enter CC transactions for a customer, which for any number of reasons might fail. I have contacted those people, and most of them will go ahead and submit the funds thru PayPal. Again, a small percentage of sales.

My philosophy is this: If I just made a dollar, it's a dollar more than I woke up with.

[Lady_Lea]

I use paypay on very rare occasions - but think that worldpay is much better. I know there are set up fees, but once you have one account, they add multiple accounts for free - I have 3 ecommerce shops now (only started them 3 weeks - and still not launched)

I have allowed worldpay and paypal on my shops

Lea

[martyt]

Thanks for the advice -- will be adding PayPal support to my site soon. If it garners a few more sales, then I'm all for it.

Also thinking of adding e-check support as well - my credit card merchant company has been pushing it for a while but I just didn't want the hassle. I personally would *never* enter my checking account number online, but apparently there are consumers who think it's a good idea.

[Sunshyn]

From a customer viewpoint, I feel that PayPal can be safer than credit card. With PayPal, the merchant doesn't get my credit card number. Because of this, PayPal feels safer to me if there is any question at all about the legitimacy of the merchant or the security of their system.

I guess that example works best with small sales. This may be a reason that many of our smallest sales (<$20) are paid for with PayPal.

[sun818]

I prefer Paypal when possible. If you have a Paypal account, its a lot easier to pay with that than entering in your CC details. I also had an occassion where a vendor tried to pay me through 2checkout.com but it was rejected. He signed up with Paypal and paid the invoice through Paypal. Be flexible with your payment types and remove the blocks that stop buyers.

[derekwong28]

There are customers who just don't want to give our credit card details online to anybody including PayPal. You can ask them to T/T into their PayPal account, and then transfer the money to you. This manner, PayPal is safer than American Express.

[Marcia]

I'm more comfortable with PayPal, if I've got a choice I'll pick the one that takes it. Even for web hosting, I use a couple out of the country who are verified international. One is in India, the other I'm not sure.

On one occasion I changed from an individual to a reseller account, within the space of a few minutes of email back and forth the payment was refunded and new payment made. Zero problems - it actually happened twice in a row because I messed up on the control panel and deleted myself altogether. Another refund, another signup. ZERO problems, it would have been a hassle had it not been PayPal and it was all resolved within minutes.

I use them constantly for everything I can.

[rainborick]

One kind of site that PayPal boosts sales is for sites that sell any kind of self-indulgence or impulse item. Lots of folks who sell informally on eBay use their PayPal funds as "mad money" and when they see they can spend that on your website without it appearing on a credit card statement or adding to the monthly bill, it makes it all the more easy for them to press the "Buy" button.

[pbreit]

"Paypal safer than my American Express?"

Yes. Many consumers are more comfortable providing their credit card information once to PayPal than to each merchant, some of whom they may not be familiar with.

[andy_boyd]

Yes, it is a good idea to accept PayPal. What happens if you have a customer who is teatering on the edge of placing an order because they aren't entirely convinced about internet security, and can you blame them really?

If you offer PayPal and CC then you give them choice, which is far better. Also think about the problems with companies like 2CheckOut going down for days, people not being able to place orders because their servers are down and can't process orders! When that was all happening I would have loved the luxury of PayPal built in as a payment option on my site, then we could still have received orders.

I have a site that takes nothing but PayPal and it works extremely well, I have no problems recommending it.