I am starting an e-commerce webpage, due to lack of money and knowledge and because am not from an Ebglish spoken country, I have thought about starting to accept payments only through paypal, and if the busyness starts rolling well, then to start accepting credit cards.

What percentage of sales do u think Ia could loose if I start like this?

do you recommend me to start this way?


help please!!!


I know at least one webpage which seems to be big which only accepts paypal as payment.

Depends upon your sales volume and number of sales you are expecting, it is better to give preference to your customers, I dont think paypal is enough as you may loss sales from the users who dont make payment through credit card. A regional payment processor with international Payment gateways might be a good combination.

Paypal + 2CheckOut for domestic as well as international customers.
Local payment gateway(domestic) for clients without CC.

Who will be your primary target? If they will be primarily paypal users, then obviously you would need to worry less about losing sales. However, if they are locals, without much knowledge of paypal, then you will run into problems.

It all depends on your market. Good luck.

About 70% of PayPal accounts are not active. The number of active accounts are less than 2% of the credit cards in circulation. How many of these credit card holders do not want to give their information to PayPal? Why are 70% of PayPal accounts not active? Does this mean that 70% of the people that tried PayPal prefer not to use them? I buy elsewhere if I have to use PayPal... but that is just me. ;)

Keep in mind that you can accept credit cards using PayPal, and your customers aren't required to have a PayPal account.* If you tell customers on your website that they will be able to pay using a credit card, without an account, that should help reduce any lost sales due to customers getting confused or thinking they have to pay with a PayPal account.


*Account Optional is not available to merchants in Germany.

Can you give some more information on Account Optional?

In the past when I've tried to pay using a credit card only through a paypal order form, it's demanded a paypal account.

The main problem you may face with PayPal is that they do not accept customers from all countries. You will find a list of counties they accept on the PayPal site.

Can you give some more information on Account Optional?

You can take a look at it by putting the email address of a PayPal Business or Premier account at the end of this link:


https://www.paypal.com/webscr?cmd=_xclick&amount=1&item_name=test&business=


If you put in the email address for your own account, you won't be able to pay using a credit card that's registered to that account (you can't pay yourself).

If the first page you see asks you to log in, look for the option for users without an account. When you click on that option, you should be taken to the Account Optional checkout flow (you will see a page asking for Shipping information).

Thanks for the info, that explains it nicely.

You should cosinder this too:

E-Gold.com ( irreversible get paid stay paid)
MoneyBookers.com ( have escrow build in , irreversible)

(This 2 will help you to get customers from countries that can't use PayPal)
SafePaySolutions.com (credit cards )

And if you do have a PayPal account they set a cookie on your browser to prevent you from using the "no account" purchase option. If you have customer that has a PayPal account and preferes to purchase that way, they are prevented from doing it unless they know to delete their PayPal cookies and restart the browser. Very annoying for customers!

And if you use the no account option, you are still letting PayPal collect information about your sales activities. You really want to freely give that out to PayPal & eBay? I sure don't.

And if you do have a PayPal account they set a cookie on your browser to prevent you from using the "no account" purchase option. If you have customer that has a PayPal account and preferes to purchase that way, they are prevented from doing it unless they know to delete their PayPal cookies and restart the browser. Very annoying for customers!

That actually makes a lot of sense now that I think back.

Can you give some more information on Account Optional?

You can take a look at it by putting the email address of a PayPal Business or Premier account at the end of this link:


https://www.paypal.com/webscr?cmd=_xclick&amount=1&item_name=test&business=


If you put in the email address for your own account, you won't be able to pay using a credit card that's registered to that account (you can't pay yourself).

If the first page you see asks you to log in, look for the option for users without an account. When you click on that option, you should be taken to the Account Optional checkout flow (you will see a page asking for Shipping information).

Would there happen to be a way to forward the user directly to the 'Don't Have a PayPal Account' page?

I think the answer is very simple. Not that many people overall have Paypal accounts (someone else has posted the details). As such you are restricting your business by not taking credit cards. You mentioned that you might add credit card acceptance later, once the site is a success. My suggestion is that it is unlikely that the site will be a success in the first place without accepting credit cards.

http://www.zebrahosts.net/

Keep in mind that you can accept credit cards using PayPal, and your customers aren't required to have a PayPal account.[/i]

I was about to say that. Never had a problem with people paying either. They do it by credit card or through their Paypal account.