PayPal seems to be the defacto standard for getting paid for selling something from a website - but I've heard enough horror stories to be leery...

Basically what I will be doing is offering digital downloads with an optional mail-order of a hard-copy with nice packaging for people that want to pay more. What I'm wondering about, is what happens from the merchant's perspective - what do they see when someone clicks pay-pal, and what is required on your website to make it link up... is it easy to configure something where if someone pays $10, they get a link to a download, and if it's $15 I get an e-mail to fill an order...

And ARE there alternatives? I think Pay Pal's reputation is getting soured lately with frozen accounts and what not...

Well, you could still use one of the maybe 10,000 other online payment service providers, such as RBS Worldpay or Plimus. They are all more or less identical.

You can pay with every reasonably important credit card at all of them, they all charge more or less the same outrageous rates, they all offer better service and better fraud screening and zero guarantees for more money, and they all more or less make you wait the same and charge you more or less the same for actually getting your money.

The notable difference to PayPal being that
a) PayPal accepts pretty much everybody with very few questions asked, their "build your online shop in 3 minutes" thing works very well.
b) PayPal still works "ok" if your sales are on the order of 1-2 dollars per year.
c) Other providers are unprofitable/unaffordable for small volumes. Setup fees and transaction costs for small volumes may be more than outrageous in some cases (hundreds of dollars upfront). PayPal cost on the other hand, is noticeable enough to be painful, but still affordable. It soon becomes uneconomic as the volume increases.
d) PayPal lets you do business with a few people that you might not otherwise reach (e.g. people whom nobody will give a credit card), though it's yours to decide whether you actually want to do business with these.
e) PayPal still lets you do business if you are the one nobody will give a credit card to. You decide whether that's something you need.
f) PayPal works as a bank in every respect but is no bank. Or, worded differently: All banks are fraudulent, and PayPal twice so. This is perfectly ok for millions of people every day, though things are even more at haphazard than usual, which will cost someone his existence every now and then. Plus, you have none of the legal background and collaterals that exists for banks in most countries. Which means that if tomorrow, PayPal tells you that they won't pay you (or anyone else) any more, then that's just bad luck for you. Again, this may be something you don't care about at all, or it may be something that won't let you sleep, you decide.

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Well, you could still use one of the maybe 10,000 other online payment service providers, such as RBS Worldpay or Plimus. They are all more or less identical.

Sorry to chime in here but this isn't quite true. See there are many processors who don't require an Internet Merchant Account (such as Paypal, and AFAIK Plimus, BMT Micro, etc.) which are a bit of a breeze to sign up to; you'll find the easier it is to get an account, the more stories you'll hear. However something like WorldPay is an actual credit card processor from the Royal Bank Of Scotland - an actual UK bank, and getting accepted requires a bit more than just filling in a sign-up form. Often or not you have to prove history of business banking to make sure your business is actually established, or at least has the funds to continue in business for a certain period. Also a credit card processor like WorldPay will often or not give better rates than a third party processor (who hold a merchant account on your behalf) but can have a pretty high monthly fee - last time I checked (few years ago) the basic monthly fee was £250. An actual CCP (as opposed to a third party CCP) won't go putting a hold on your account as PayPal does without attempting to resolve the matter first.

A few PayPal alternatives are listed here.

As far as users go, there aren't any alternatives of this type.

Users trust PayPal button. They are by far most likely to have a PayPal account. For many alternatives, some users cannot even get the account (regional or other restrictions).

This is much bigger factor when it comes to getting paid. The best system users don't click on isn't very useful.

Horror stories are mostly true (some are inaccurate), the complications that arise can soak up a fair amount of time and it's also no secret that PayPal makes a nice profit from manipulating these funds. But at the same time - count number of horror stories vs. successful transactions. It's similar to not using a car since tens of thousands of people are killed every year. Or not flying since dozens of aircraft crash every year. Or having a heart pumping blood, since hundreds of thousands die from heart problems.


Later, if things take off, one always has the option of making a company and doing more serious processing. And one always has the option of doing a full shopping cart thing, but then things get complicated fast, usually require having a registered company, an account with adequate funds, all relevant papers, contact number, ....

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Original post by Antheus Or having a heart pumping blood, since hundreds of thousands die from heart problems.

OH GOD! GET THIS TIME BOMB OUT OF ME!

On topic:
I'd expect a lot more banks to start supporting online transactions with their own various technologies. The legal gray area is probably the biggest problem with PayPal, which would probably be resolved by having banks fill into that role.

It makes sense that banks with any reasonable business account support would add features like this in the future to try to get as much of the E-commerce pie as possible.

Thanks for your input guys, very much appreciated!