Hey folks,

Thought I would get the concensus of the forum, althouth we generally don't do that for major business decisions such as this one.

However, we are at a crossroads here and are thinking of removing PayPal as one of our payment options. We currently accept Visa, M/C, PayPal, Checks and Money Orders. Our question is, do you think PayPal is still needed? We understand that some of our PayPal customers either: a) use an Amex and therefore, could not pay with credit card directly; or b) aren't able to get a credit card for various reasons.

Do you think that not accepting PayPal with all our other payment options still in place would affect:

a) current customers - would they cancel?
b) new customers - would they fret the lack of it as an option?

Opinions please...

I'd keep it.
It's already fraud screened (mostly - just don't accept silly names from weird places) and it's quick and easy. Alot of customers use it for self-security by never revealing their own ID, but also because it's so international. I know a US guy who has to have a PayPal hoster, because he's a student and doesn't have a creditcard, and PayPal accepts US/UK bank accounts

Hey folks,

Thought I would get the concensus of the forum, althouth we generally don't do that for major business decisions such as this one.

However, we are at a crossroads here and are thinking of removing PayPal as one of our payment options. We currently accept Visa, M/C, PayPal, Checks and Money Orders. Our question is, do you think PayPal is still needed? We understand that some of our PayPal customers either: a) use an Amex and therefore, could not pay with credit card directly; or b) aren't able to get a credit card for various reasons.

Do you think that not accepting PayPal with all our other payment options still in place would affect:

a) current customers - would they cancel?
b) new customers - would they fret the lack of it as an option?

Opinions please...


Depending on the situation with with your Terms of Service and agreements. If you have agreements in place that have fees associated with them, there is no guarantee that you will ever be paid for these fees.

Example: Say a customer signs up for a shared hosting package. If your terms of service states that you charge for excessive resource usage. Well say your customer used well over "excessive" resource. The only thing you or your billing department could do without billing information on file is send an invoice through PayPal and have hopes that they pay it. If not your out the money. Now if you had billing information such as cc #'s experation date, address, etc you would be able to bill for this. That is the only downfall of using PayPal or other third party merchant.

On the other hand, PayPal is widely used, especially in the hosting industry. I would say not completely remove it but try to ween away from it gradually.

Questions:

1) Does any of your existing user base use it? If so, then keep it. If you have 3000 customers and 0 have selected to use paypal... then it's probably not necessary.

2) Does it hurt anything to leave it as an option? I mean, really... what is the problem? I presume your billing system has a plug-in for it, so it shouldn't add any significant (or even minor?) admin time, etc....

I'm a big fan of giving as many payment options as possible to our clients. It's THEIR money, and we're happy to accept it however they want to give it to us.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the comments so far, much appreciated. To touch base on what MrZippy has said:

1) Yes, but very few of our clients still use it.

2) Does it hurt anything? No. The main reason we were thinking of cutting it out, is for accounting. While we share the same mentality as you (client's money, they can give it to us the way that works best for them) it is making our books a little more complicated than they may need to be.

I am also open to suggestions for having multiple payment options, but making the bookkeeping easier.

I would keep it. We encounter a large number of customers who request Paypal by name.

On a side note... why don't you add support for American Express to your merchant account?

For accounting, why is is harder? You can export the data straight into your accounting program....

One of my biggest mistakes when I owned httpme, was not accepting PayPal. I was crazy stubborn, that all payments had to be via credit card, and nothing else. Turned away a lot of business because they couldn't pay by PayPal. That was foolish of me.

About 20% of my clients now choose PayPal as their payment method. I don't see any problems with the bookkeeping side of things, by having PayPal as a payment option.

Less than 10% of my clients pay with Paypal... HOWEVER... of that base of clients that does pay with Paypal, there are a few that will ONLY pay with Paypal. So, I would not remove it as an option... why would I want to lose that business if I can help it?

I personally, speaking as though I was a client, would be attracted more to a host that offers paypal as a payment possibility. There are some people out there that do not feel comfortable giving our their cc information online or even sending a check in the mail.

The only thing you or your billing department could do without billing information on file is send an invoice through PayPal and have hopes that they pay it. If not your out the money. Now if you had billing information such as cc #'s experation date, address, etc you would be able to bill for this. That is the only downfall of using PayPal or other third party merchant.
^In response to Host Frog.

My company uses paypal subscriptions, they enter into the agreement upon signup and we do not need their approval to charge money from their account. Its quite useful.

I'd say a about 60% of our clients still use paypal. Some just perfer to use that method. I think the fact that we accept PayPal and credit card helps greatly. It also helps greatly on the MBLicenses end because ModernGigabyte doesn't accept Paypal, and we do.

I say keep it. You will regret removing it.

Regards,