PayPal no longer requiring account set up!

[pbreit]

PayPal rolled out a much-requested feature. Buyers are no longer required to set up a PayPal account when paying.

[Essex_boy]

So how does that work then?

[bcolflesh]

Yeah - I can't figure it out or see any announcement on site.

<edit> I see now:

"If you don't have a PayPal account
and want to pay with a credit card:"

Is now an option on the checkout screen.
</edit>

[transactiongeek]

Odd, don't see it as an option.

[bcolflesh]

It's on the lower left of the web "Checkout" screen for me - to the right is the usual "Enter your PayPal Username and password" form.

[pleeker]

It's a great addition, but I'm assuming (since I haven't investigated it) there will be no fraud protection available on payments from non-PayPal members.

[bcolflesh]

I'm guessing it's covered by 5:5-1 :

paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/ua-outside

The seller is responsible for reversed payments - unless the transaction is covered by the Seller Protection Policy.

[transactiongeek]

Maybe I am blind, but I deleted all my cookies and then clicked on webmasterworld subscribe and I do not see this checkbox.

Perhaps it's an IP geolocation thing, as I am in Canada.

[Emma McCreary]

"This feature is available for Buy Now, Donations, and Shopping Cart buttons, but not for Subscription buttons."

[sun818]

This addresses the often stated "disadvantage" of Paypal requiring an account.

Can you all see this?
[paypal.com...]

With the PayPal Account Optional feature, your customers who are new to PayPal will no longer be required to create a PayPal account to complete a purchase. The customer will go through an alternate checkout, and will have the option to sign up with PayPal afterward.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Are they still banning certain countries from buying, seems they do it quite a bit.

[mfishy]

Wow! This does change everything!

[amznVibe]

Actually you missed a few other huge new PayPal features:

[b]Merchants and sellers may now issue partial refunds.[/b]

[b]non-alterable buttons[/b] (encrypted code to prevent tampering)

[b][url=http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/mer/cowp_summary-outside]Custom Payment Pages[/url] make payment page look like your website[/b]

[b]PayPal Germany launched: http://www.paypal.de [/b]

[b][url=http://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/mer/express_return_summary-outside]Auto-Return[/url] (to source webpage after purchase)[/b]

[CernyM]

Merchants and sellers may now issue partial refunds.

FINALLY!

Looks like PayPal is getting serious about servicing merchants outside of its eBay roots.

[sun818]

Up to this point, Paypal has performed a great job of keeping their site simple, easy to use while adding great features. Since eBay bought out Paypal, there is some wonderful integration between the two services. My main concern is that eBay will start messing with Paypal to the point where it becomes hard to use like eBay.com

[amznVibe]

... to the point where it becomes hard to use like eBay.com

eBay is hard to use? I don't see how?

All these new PayPal features are either automatic or optional. Keeps it simple.
(not to mention completely backwards compatibile, breaking no existing code)

[gramski]

Unfortunately it seems that these new features are not available to all sellers. I'm in Australia and it seems that the "account optional" feature doesn't apply here - it is not mentioned in the help pages at all.

The other new features are showing but not "account optional" or "partial refunds"-I've emailed paypal to confirm this but they usually take a day or two to reply.

I've noticed some other changes today also - paypal's emails are now coming from [e-mail] so it may be that "international" accounts have slightly different (read less) features than the US accounts.

[derekwong28]

I am not overjoyed about this. This will simply make it much easier for fraudsters.

If PayPal are going waive people signing up for memberships, they should provide CVS and AVS details as well as the country of origin of the credit card in order to let merchants assess risks.

[phaze]

I think the whole point of outsourcing your processing is to have all that taken care of by the provider.

This rocks. That irritating 'your paypal account is almost activated' email that our customers were getting is no longer. yippee!

[andy_boyd]

This does change everything, removing the prior account signup before sale solves one of the biggest qualms about PayPal. I'm setting up a new store now, maybe PayPal is all I need?

[258cib]

I'm too lazy to look up what I'm paying right now on transactions and processing. But, I'll get around to it. What is PayPal charging per transaction? I remember looking at them when I was setting up some e-commerce accounts and it look good--except when I hit that one had to be a PayPal "member," and I said, "nah."

Thanks. Good catch.

[JeremyL]

Chalk a win up in the fraudster's corner!

This is going to dramatically increase the fraud with paypal payments. I predict within 6 months they will be forced to do true fraud screening with AVS, CVS and so on because they are going to see a HUGE chargeback rate one the scam artists find out about this.

They also need to integrate a system that filters out orders by proxies and does geo targeting like http://www.maxmind.com/app/ccv. It you are selling over the internet it is a must these days.

[ImVickieB]

I agree with derekwong28 on this one.

I liked the fact that PayPal vetted it's buyers first so I didn't have to worry about that.

We accept MC / Visa which we process through our own merchant account and are pretty strict about what we accept and our charge back rate reflects this.

Anyone know what type of charge back fees PayPal will charge the merchants? I haven't looked the terms over fully but is there a way merchants can opt out of this "wonderful new service" and just accept payments from vetted PayPal payers?

[George]

>>>>just accept payments from vetted PayPal payers?

That is my prefered option too. I take paypal only to be able to cover all posts. Not sure if I want to accept Paypal orders if the fraud problem increases.

[thumpcyc]

Hey ImVickieB, according to what I read, you can turn it off in your paypal account settings.

Miva Merchant choked on an order for the first time last night, we got paid via paypal for a miva merchant order, but the order does not exist in miva merchant, so we do not know what the customer ordered, having to contact to ask. Very strange, sent a possible bug report to miva.

Anyone else seen this with miva merchant and paypal today, or is it just coincidence?

Thumpcyc

[JeremyL]

I found the off switch.

Profile -> Website Payments Preferences -> PayPal Account Optional on/off

Guess what i picked ;)

[ImVickieB]

Thanks for finding that!

I have turned that option off for my accounts too. I think, unless paypal puts some MAJOR checks in place, they will be seeing major abuse of this service.

[mquarles]

As one who has been very critical of some of these drawbacks in PayPal, I must say they are clearly moving in the right direction.

I only take small payments on one site as an upgrade to something they already purchased, but it is about 3-4 orders a day. I'll leave it alone. If fraud becomes a problem, I'll return and post accordingly.

MQ

[div01]

Profile -> Website Payments Preferences -> PayPal Account Optional on/off

Any non-US merchants see this option?

[transactiongeek]

I am in Canada and have custom / auto-return but no ability for optional user accounts.