Monday, September 26, 2011

Top 3 PayPal Alternatives

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PayPal has dominated the online credit card field for a number of years promising easy, fast, and secure credit card processing for the consumer and small businesses. When eBay bought PayPal in 2002, it was a match made in heaven: eBay anointed the payment gateway of choice to make it easier for eBay sellers to accept credit card payments without a merchant account securely. However, because of PayPal/eBay’s close integration sometimes your experience on PayPal may suffer if you are not an eBay seller. From various transfer limits preventing you from moving money out of your PayPal account to forced refunds that PayPal initiated on their own, you may find it hard to get the money that was transferred to your account. You may want to check out some of the other services being offered:

Google Checkout. Since there’s a better chance that a consumer has a Google account rather than a PayPal account, Google Checkout could be a welcome choice. Google Checkout offers many of the same features that PayPal offers, including API integration, “Buy Now” and “Cart” button creation tools. In addition their transaction fees are quite favorable for high volume stores reaching as low as 1.9% per transaction. However, it is Google, and do you really want Google tracking (among other things) what you are buying?

WePay. If you need a quick tool to get money from your roommate to pay the rent, this is for you. WePay is centered around how to get money from one person to another and how to get a group of people to pitch in for a common purpose, like a gift or for… fantasy football! Very quick and intuitive interface for the person that is not trying to sell a lot of goods.

Square. If you want to really impress your friends you can pull out your iPhone and Square’s snazzy credit card reader attachment and swipe your friends cards! Creating an account on Square is free and they will send you your first card reader for free (don’t pay $10 at the Apple Store, it is a rip off). If you want to get up close and personal and make sure that your friends pay you the money they owe you, give Square a try.

There are dozens other alternatives to PayPal that allow you to collect funds without a merchant account. Which services do you use?

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