PayPal, PayPalPro? Costs? Ease of integration? Your 2p worth!

[Mark Crisell]

We've a long established site that takes payments via Secure Payments along with a couple of other manual type payments (vouchers, cheques, etc).

Have read so very much on these forums regarding PayPal, with some having long standing issues, and others saying it's easy to add and opens the store up to a further set of customers.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, and if anyone can wipe away the fog and explain the costs I'd be extremely grateful! Also, whats the difference between the "PayPal Website Payments" and the "PayPal Website Payments Pro" that I see in the "Payment and Security" tab of Business Settings?

[iancampbell]

I wouldn't touch PayPal with a ten-foot pole, if I were you. I already have it set up on my site. I run a supplements site - relatively low-ticket, but orders range from £20 to £100 most of the time.

PayPal have a Seller Protection Policy that is essentially worthless. The reason is that they demand two things (at least); that you use computer-trackable recorded delivery (which costs extra but isn't really a problem) plus you have to ship to an address the same as the customer's Paypal-confirmed address. This is a problem, because most PayPal personal account holders (more than 90%) don't even have a confirmed address. Essentially, PayPal are asking buyers to do something fairly complicated and troublesome for something that only benefits sellers. Telling customers that you will only ship to a confirmed address is terrible PR (you are telling them that you suspect them of being fraudsters) and will probably lose you the sale, that you might have got if you didn't offer Paypal in the first place.

So with Paypal, you can be defrauded and there is not a damned thing you can do about it. Plus they are quite expensive, for an inferior service.

Another gripe is that Paypal don't pass on the money immediately; you have an account with them, and have to explicitly ask for the money (which has to be more than £50, or you get charged again) and it takes even longer than a typical UK bank transfer for it to happen.

Just my $0.02.