Pay Pal credit card avoidance

[LordDamax]

Paypal forces you to use a bank account for one reason. Money.

When they charge your credit card, they pay a 2.2% fee to Visa/MC/whoever. It's likely lower than 2.2% as they do such a massive volume (volume discount) but 2.2% is pretty much the standard.

Every time money is moved inside paypal to a Permiere or Business account, paypal skims 2.9% off the top. Now, for a credit card payment, I understand that. They pay 2.2% and want to make a profit. Thats cool. I'm all for capatalism.

Personal accounts have no receive money fees. But, personal accounts cannot accept credit card payments. Again, I get that. They'd pay 2.2% to the credit card company, and they'd not recoup that cost.

So, why 'force' a bank account transaction? Because paypal skims 2.9% off ALL money going to a Premiere or Business account REGARDLESS of the source. If you own a Primere account and a seperate Business account, and you move $100 from one to the other, you'll have $97.10. Move it back, $94.28, move it again, $91.54 - ad infinitum until you have no money.

So if they "make" you use a bank account they clear a cool 2.9% on every transaction. Every time you use a credit card you slam the hell out of paypal's profits.

Personally, paypal is the devil incarnate and I despise it with all passion I can muster. Unfortunately, they are THE online payment solution. There are others, smaller, unknowns... untrustworthy... (if its possible to be more untrustworthy than paypal) and no one uses them. Everyone uses paypal, so I suck it up and hate them while I do it.

I've been screwed so many times by paypal, to the tune of $1100 out of MY pocket and Paypal says "Oops sorry, too bad for you"

Bah now I'm just ranting. My only advice here: If you sell on ebay using paypal NEVER ship to an unconfirmed address. If you do, and the buyer is fraudulent, paypal's policy is short and sweet: They take the money back from you, and too f'ing bad. I had this happen to me, and I had the fraud's name, home address, home phone number, etc... gave it all to paypal, they actually told me "We're not interested. We returned the funds to the victim (the guy who's credit card was stolen). If you'd like to persue this on your own, feel free. We're done."

[arrogcow]

I didn't realize they were charging me 2.9% if someone pays with a bank account. I always thought I was getting the full ammount unless from a card. however, if I use my paypal card as a debit card, I get some cash back (1.5%).

Adam

[LordDamax]

If your account is Primere or Business, regardless of how you are sent money they take 2.9% from the transfer (the receiver of the money pays this fee).

A personal account receiving money doesnt pay any fees, but also cannnot accept credit card payments.

[Archangel]

I prefer Paypal. I'm not sure some of the info being posted here is correct. Paypal has fairly detailed explanations on their site. Yes, they had to pay a class action. I got some of that.

I believe they make their money on the daily interest on the float in their account. In any case, I don't think there is a better system out there for individuals.

[LordDamax]

There is no better system, until an individual gets screwed. Most people's problem with paypal is that they are completely hands off, and go to lengths to protect the person who was engaged in illegal activity. Like I said, I've lost over $1100 to fraud on paypal, and paypal hasnt done a single thing to protect me, as the seller of the items.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Even for small businesses, they provide a good service for little cost. Many small businesses (like the web sites for many Highland dress retailers) cannot afford to pay someone to design and host an internal shopping cart system from their web site. So it's either not accept on line payments (which means, in practice, loosing a whole lot of sales) or using a system like PayPal to set up your on line shopping cart. Yes, they take a fee from payments sent in through them. But so does every major credit card. Yes, PayPal takes a slightly higher fee, but they are also providing a service, for which they rightly expect to get paid.

And note now that you do not even have to have a PayPal account in order to send money throgh Pay Pal. When you order something on line from a web site that uses Pay Pal for their shopping cart, it's just like if you ordered from any other site with any other shopping cart system. Somebody is getting paid for their service somewhere.

Pay Pal has enabled a lot of small, web based businesses and individuals to accept credit card payments on line who otherwise would not be able to offer this service. So let's not knock them too badly, eh?

M