Hey all, I recently started looking into accepting "micropayments" on paypal, and thought that everyone on DP should know about this since there are a lot of people who accept small payments and will get nailed if they are paying the standard fees. (only getting .67 out of a dollar hurts!) Basically it applies on transactions of $12 or less, you pay .05 + 5%, so it hurts slightly less to lose a dime instead of 33 cents if you're accepting just one dollar. The catch? It only applies to certain transactions, and you need to maintain a seperate account for those transactions PayPal offers support for Micropayments to merchants for US to US, GB to GB, AU to AU, and EU to EU transactions for Business and Premier accounts. This feature is offered at a special rate of 5% + $0.05 per transaction. https://www.paypal.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropayments.html I know a lot of people know about this, but I figured I'd share for those like me who didn't know. (I'd like to see more money in the pockets of DP folks than in Paypal's)
Thanks for sharing this useful info !!! I'm not going to use it for now (my transactions are $15 or above), but maybe in future. Rep for you
I have just completed a detailed study of the same thing and even traded a couple of emails with PayPal on the subject. The gottcha is that it applies to all transactions to that account. You pay less for transactions under $12 and more for transactions over $12. It is also only available to US merchants who offer PayPal as their only micropayment processor and it is only valid for US based transactions. I have not yet confirmed whether that means sales in $ or from US based customers. I entered a years worth of transactions into Excel and figured the fees and variance. I paid $1 more for the entire year with a standard account. It only takes a few transactions in the $25 range to destroy all your savings for a lot of $5 sales. If the vast majority of your sales are less the $12, it does make a lot of sense to open the micro account. Another interesting note is that businesses can have a regular and a micro account.
Cool, that is really good additional information. I haven't yet tried it so it is good to hear how it works in a "real world" scenario.
According to their site you have to open a 2nd business account get the micro-pricing. You can then use one account for sales under $12 and the other for sales over $12. https://www.paypal.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropayments.html