I've had several new clients ask to pay by PayPal recently and am thinking of opening an account.
I guess the charges have put me off in the past. Generally clients pay by standing order or bank transfer which costs me nothing.
Anyone had any experience good or bad with Paypal or any thoughts?
Replies (6)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
High charges
comparatively high charges but simplicity of set up and ease of integration to website for clients convieniance works well.
Don't generally take PayPal,for annual fee as 95% of clients are on SO, but embedded to wb site for things like Annual Retun and Tax Insurance.
Our options
We offer several payment options. Obviously we have the usual of cheque and bank transfer. Our standard payment method though is monthly direct debit via Gocardless (1% fee up to £2 max). Our other options is card payment. We use worldpay zinc. It's a mobile card machine that links to a mobile or tablet. The rate is 2.75%. Higher than some others but it has a virtual terminal for cardholder not present which is useful. I think sumup is the cheapest of these at 1.95% without a monthly fee. You can get the fee down if you pay monthly but we just don't process the volume to make it worthwhile.
Read carefully
Read their Ts&Cs very carefully. They will [***] back any funds which the client later disputes.
I wouldn't give them access to my bank account, will you?
Paypal chargebacks/reversals
Read their Ts&Cs very carefully. They will [***] back any funds which the client later disputes.
I wouldn't give them access to my bank account, will you?
In addition to the charges that was actually one of my concerns.
In tens of thousands Paypal transactions my business had a chargeback/reversal rate somewhere round 0.1%. Not a significant cost of accepting that payment method compared with other methods that I'm aware of. Yes, disputes (which were mostly claimed to be unauthorised card use rather than defective merchandise) were almost invariably resolved in the buyers favour but I understand that to be the case with most payment methods that accept a credit card.
Charges start at a high percentage for low transaction volumes, but then most payment methods have bank charges of some form associated with them, and when comparing with other payment methods you need to make sure that you're comparing like with like. Other methods often have a fixed monthly charge whereas Paypal has a zero monthly entry cost. For an additional £20pcm you can also access a payment terminal which allows you to take "cardholder not present" payments over the phone.