Can anyone share their experiences of having PayPal and a third-party Merchant Account on the same website, and what percentage chooses which? I've heard that there's some people who won't use PayPal and therefore you need a third-party system. Best regards, James
Well, in the past I did offer both the Paypal and the 3rd Party Payment Processor (Plimus/Regsoft which supports credit card) and I found that some 95 to 97% of the payments come from the traditional credit card processors and a small portion only comes in from Paypal. The thing is that not everyone sell things through Paypal and thus would not be able to maintain a positive balance. For the most times, they just have a zero dollar balance. As you know, for most countries, you cannot fund your Paypal account and the only way is to verify it with a credit card and you do the fund on demand thing (ie when you pay, Paypal will withdraw funds from your credit card then pay the merchant, keeping a zero dollar balance in your account). So technically, if anyone has a verified Paypal account, would most likely have a credit card which they can use to make payments. The only time someone would use a Paypal account is when they are trying to get rid of their existing positive balance or that they want to hide their credit card details from your payment processor. Of course, there are those people who do not have a credit card because they signed up with Paypal under false pretenses, either because they are underaged or they used a Virtual Credit Card just to foil the Paypal verification system. I found it a pain to accept Paypal payments and there seems to be a higher portion of them ended up as fraud especially if they are paying through an Unverified Paypal account. So whenever I receive Paypal payments, I will ensure it is from a verified account and the order checks out. The extra work was necessary to prevent fraud but it was more pains then it was worth even if it means that I am getting under 5 paypal sales a month. Now that I stopped receiving Paypal payments because I learned that people are cheating the paypal verification system by lying in their application and using a virtual credit card especially when they are underaged or from a country not support by paypal. I actually do not find my level of sales fallen. To me, Paypal is more pain then it is worth. If you choose to using Paypal, ensure that you only receive payments from verified account and refund those who are unverified and also keep the dollar value of the transaction small to minimize your risks.