The Business of Software

When I set up PayPal payments on my site a few weeks ago you could pay through PayPal without signing up for a PayPal account. I've just clicked through on one of my 'buy now' buttons and it won't let me make a purchase without putting in my PayPal account details or signing up. When did this change? Or am I finally losing my marbles after too many 80 hour weeks?

Strange! is it the way you have set up the button? to require registered users only?

I know i have used PayPal before without an account, thats the whole point of it, its easy to use...

They have a way of allowing anyone with a credit card make payments, but I haven't worked with that myself.

> Strange! is it the way you have set up the button?

I don't think I've changed it.

Maybe its because my merchant account status with PayPal has changed? I'm just going around in circles on their website trying to find out.

False alarm.

It appears that it wasn't giving me the option to pay without signing in because it knew I had a PayPal account (using a cookie presumably).

I just tried it from another PC and it gave me the option to pay without signing in.

Doh!

Move along ... nothing to see here.

If you ever had an account awith PayPal, and you cancelled it, PayPal will refuse to take /any/ of your payments. It will simply say: "We have this CC# on record - please sign in to pay". Very scary actually, as I specifically requested to CANCEL my account there.

They either do not honor cancel requests, which is illegal, or they ban their entire service to anyone with the audacity to cancel their service, which migh also be illegal.

More info about PayPal on http://paypalsucks.com/

MS, Google and PayPal appear to be commonly regarded as the unholy trinity of all that is evil in IT. But my businesses is based on all 3.

Comparison:

Netbanx
Commission: ~8% 
Ease integrating/changing: a pain, and they charge for each change
How long it takes to get money in my account: 30 to 90 days
Accepts foreign currency: only if I pay a lot more

Paypal
Commission: ~3%
Ease integrating/changing: easy (for payment buttons anyway)
How long it takes to get money in my account: 3-5 days
Accepts foreign currency: yes

I may remove Netbanx from my main payment page and just keep them in reserve.

3% and they pay in 3-5 days? I'm amazed.

I'll definitely look into paypal and reevaluate my current service with share-it (which is good, but costs 5x and takes 10x as long to get paid).

> 3%
around that, I think it varies with volume
+ a small fixed charge (about £0.20)
see the paypal site for details

>and they pay in 3-5 days? I'm amazed.
basically you can transfer the money out as soon as it has arrived and it is in your bank account in 3-5 days

I think its worth having more than one ecommerce option if possible. That way you arent completely hosed if on of them freezes your account, has a major technical problem etc.

share-it charges (3 USD or EUR + 5%) or 15% (whatever you chose, so obviously depends on your pricepoint).

They pay everything sold during one month on the 15th of the next month. So minimum delay is 15 days, maximum 45. Wire transfer delay is on top of that. They charge for the transfer, but not much.

You're completely right in the benefit of having more than one option. Always having a back up is just sensible.

I guess paypal doesn't offer automatic registration key generation, which share-it does, but the price & time difference doesn't justify it - I guess it'll be a matter of putting some code together up on the website. It might end up being my first delving into php.

Andy, thanks a lot for the info.

paypal is the best in my opinion. their new paypal website pro service lets you take credit cards orders without ever touching their site (well the backend stuff happens but you keep your visitors on your site with your UI,etc). its only $20/month

they also recently introduced micropayments allowing you to sell stuff for a couple bucks (under 5 i belive) at a lower rate.

useful paypal site for payment fees
http://www.ppcalc.com

With paypal you can get them to call pages on your website when a payment is made, this could then generate the license key and your system could email it to them.

A couple of guys I know who use PayPal suggest that you do not tie your primary business account into PayPal. Open a separate sweep account just for PayPal that transfers everything above the minimum required into your primary account every night. That gives you a little safety should your relationship with PayPal become adversarial at some point.

Paypal has been known to freeze accounts at the first suspicion of fraud, no matter how doubious it was, so take the advice and have a backup strategy.

Transferring you money out ASAP is also a good idea if liquidity matters to you (which I assume it does).

Best Regards