I'm thinking of using PayPal for credit card processing. I read a long thread about merchant accounts and saw a few comments about it PayPal, but I have some specific questions. Can any of you more experienced ones out there see any flaws with the following scenarios?

1. Customer orders new account from me
- clicks on an order button, gets taken to paypal screen
- fills out credit card info, pays
- I get transaction log, verify money received, create the account

2. Customer needs to pay monthly bill
- I send out an email invoice with a link either directly to the paypal payment screen (can I have one where the amount to pay is preset?) or to a page on my site with the link to paypal
- They fill out the form and pay their monthly fee
- I get transaction log, see that they did pay, money is in my checking account

Also, to you Perl gurus: I believe that Perl can fill out HTML forms and submit them - right? Would it be possible to have my customer fill out a form similar to the PayPal one (but customized with my logo and to my taste) and then have a sneaky Perl script go and fill out the PayPal form? (thus completely hiding PayPal from the picture)

Sorry for the lengthy questions and thanks in advance to those who took the time to read this far!

Andy

I think the customer has to enter the info, directly into the form on Paypals site, but check their TOS to be certain.

You have 600 clients will you be sending out invoices to each one of them?
A merchant account is more easier and time consuming to use.
Also check the rates(taken away from each transection) of PayPal and a Merchant account.

Another alternative would be to go with a third-party payment processor like www.revecom.com who can take care of recurring billing and fraud protection for you.

Mark Vockler
Aletia Hosting

you can setup your form to post to the paypal page but they will still have to confirm their payment on the form residing on their server but you can also set the 'out' page which will display whatever page you want after they're done making their payment.

revecom is being really stingy, they are being so himme they won't even give partial refunds on account purchases and what forth. Creating it impossible to have non-refundable setup fees..... This also causes a problem because then on each refunded account, it costs you about 10$..... that is ridiculous.

I charge 20$ setup, that way if someone refunds, all costs are covered under setup, and there are no worries. I am going to have to talk with revecom personally about the situation because they told me it was not possible when I emailed them to please refund one of my customers credit cards with 3/4 purchase

I've tried to connect to the PP page via a form page (shopping cart) but the link never works.

ckirby - maybe the solution would be to just cut a check in the right amount? Might save transaction fees, etc.

AndyB - My only problems with PayPal are no Amex/Discover, and you -must- create an account with them in order to use your ccard to pay for something. We've found that about 50% of people balk at that step. The other half just shrug n do it. (Associate of ours is using it as payment for his trade show http://webandtechfair.com and is dealing with the above problems.

Another option is http://www.swipethatcard.com. IF! its available you can buy the terminal for $275, and monthlys are in the $15 range + charge fees (which seem competative). We are leaning towards these guys, as soon as they can find us a refurb terminal (Thats the $275 job).

Good Luck.

Kaith, that's very valuable info about customers balking at the account sign-up part and not being able to accept Amex/Disc. Thanks. WafenSS made a point which had not yet occurred ot me. Sending out a bunch of invoices, whether paper or email, and waiting for the customer to pay is not as nice as automatically billing their credit card every month. That sounds a lot better than my original idea..

Andy

ckirby - maybe the solution would be to just cut a check in the right amount? Might save transaction fees, etc.

No, sending out cheques is a pain in the ass, how hard is it on there part to just charge the credit card the ammount I say? Hell they are already making a killing off me for doing **** all ;p

How do you make paypal accept credit card? Doesn't the customer has to be paypal member before he/she can pay you by credit card? I have a premier account with paypal and with this type of account, I am supposed to be able to accept credit card payment, but then I don't see how this is going to work except the payee is also paypal member and uses his/her credit card to pay me by using paypal service...

cheers,
:beer:

Yes, the customer does have to be a PayPal member to pay you. Looks like PayPal has updated their website some. They just posted a Web Accept manual, in which it says plainly that the customer would have to enter their PayPal account number or sign up for one during the order process. http://www.paypal.com/html/wa_manual.pdf

Andy

I loved PayPal for paying for auctions and elance etc. But, I bought this one sever a while ago off of ebay and paid for it. I never received it and they filed a claim etc. But I never got my money back, so I had to close my account and charge the money back. It made me mad that PayPal didn't even try. I personally recommend for a merchant account, http://instabill.com . They rock, they have an awesome control panel that can do reoccurring billing so you don't even have to invoice your customers it will automatically bill them. Instabill.com is the way to go, plus there are no fees.

Originally posted by SECUREDNETWORKS
I loved PayPal for paying for auctions and elance etc. But, I bought this one sever a while ago off of ebay and paid for it. I never received it and they filed a claim etc. But I never got my money back, so I had to close my account and charge the money back. It made me mad that PayPal didn't even try. I personally recommend for a merchant account, http://instabill.com . They rock, they have an awesome control panel that can do reoccurring billing so you don't even have to invoice your customers it will automatically bill them. Instabill.com is the way to go, plus there are no fees.

No fees? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Instabill charge 10 percent? So basically, for every 10 dollars a customer pays you, they take 1.

SecuredNetworks, can you give us any personal experiences as far as how you like online orders with Instabill? What is it like for a customer who is buying something online from you compared to PayPal? Any weird fees or restrictions that Instabill imposes that may not be obvious?

Andy

I love paypal

PayPal works nicely if your customers can get past the having to create an account part. I would recommend VeriSign and a merchant account, though, because it really gives you the most flexability. You get a control panel to authorize, charge, etc. all from the web.

VeriSign PayFlow Link is cheap ($19.99/mo, $179.00 setup) compared to the other TCP/IP based ones, and I think it works just as well. In fact, it has one of those things that submits the information back to your website so you can tell whether or not they paid right away.


Andrew

What I ment is that there are no setup fees, monthly fees etc. Instabill has been great, my customers love it and I do as well. You can issue refunds right from there, do reocurring charges and more. And plus it keeps track of all of your reocurrin customers and you can look at the info on each one if you ever need to reach them incase somthing happens. I would recommend it for a hosting company just starting out. PayPal will not stand up for you and no one wants to login and pay every month plus they'll have to create and account.

If someone was going to purchase something from your website, would they have to go to an Instabill page or would they simply be filling out a form on your page?

Andy

Instabill is owned by revecom, and is they take more % away from each charge you collect.


Revecom, yes it is a pain that they dont let you give partial refunds, however in a recent email I got they said updates to be done by the end of the month would include allowing a partial refund.

Either way I think the easiest and cheapest way to handle a refund is just to mail a cheque. :)


Zach
ICUServices

Look at the way it is on our web site http://secured-net.net . You can customize the ordering page to add fields for domain name user name password etc.

Check it out.

Hi,
Paypal may be great for some things. But for a hosting company it can mean failure.

Most customers back out ... one guy said 50% - I saw it much higher ...
They simply do not want to fill out your form, then go to some other company and give them all their information. It makes them turn and go to a host with a merchant account.

If your wanting to grow... paypal is not for you.
Don't get me wrong,,, it is good for many things... this is just not one of them.

http://instabill.com looks like a good place to look into. Sure, they have a fee each time you run a card.. but regular merchant accounts have a fee, plus a monthly bill for your account statement, plus other fees.

The choice is yours, but I wouldn't go for paypal to host customers. It runs them off.

Tim L

Originally posted by superiorhost
http://instabill.com looks like a good place to look into. Sure, they have a fee each time you run a card.. but regular merchant accounts have a fee, plus a monthly bill for your account statement, plus other fees.

If you do consider Insta-Bill, you might want to check out www.Revecom.com at the same time (if your transaction amounts are not tiny), since the latter has all of the benefits of Insta-Bill but charge only 3.95% + $1 per transaction (as opposed to 10% for Insta-Bill). There's a one-time setup fee of about $50 to go with Revecom but that's about it.

Mark Vockler
Aletia Hosting

If you go with Revcom not only do you have to pay a setup fee they charge you a dollar a transaction?? Plus 3%. Thats way more then instabill when your doing small purchases.

Originally posted by SECUREDNETWORKS
If you go with Revcom not only do you have to pay a setup fee they charge you a dollar a transaction?? Plus 3%. Thats way more then instabill when your doing small purchases.

Yes, this is correct. For smaller transactions, particularly those under $10, Insta-Bill does make more sense. You'll need to balance this out with your high-ticket items to see which method saves you more.

For instance, if you get about 3 $800 sales in a month, and say 50 $7 sales, the savings you get with Revecom from the $800 items would more than offset the higher per-transaction amounts taken from the $7 sales as compared to Insta-Bill's.

Mark Vockler
Aletia Hosting

Take my advice - I've used PayPal in the past (with EXACTLY the same plan you are thinking of) and it's not a great solution.

First, if PayPal down ("I'm sorry, the server is busy at this time. Please try your transaction later.") and this makes you look VERY bad to your potential customer.

Also, let's face it, there are alot of people out there that can't figure out how to fill out a simple form....let alone a signup form for PayPal. I'm estimating that around 20% of people who signed up with us using PayPal couldn't figure out how to do it.

You can't integrate PayPal into your ordering system to make it seamless...customers MUST go through PayPal and sign their TOS.

Bottom line - get a merchant account. It's a PIA to get signed up and setup with a merchant account....but once it's done, you're all set. PayPal, on the other hand, is a constant source of glitches and customer support issues.

Good luck!

--Tina

Originally posted by AffordableHost
Also, let's face it, there are alot of people out there that can't figure out how to fill out a simple form....let alone a signup form for PayPal. I'm estimating that around 20% of people who signed up with us using PayPal couldn't figure out how to do it.


agree... also, don't they have to wait for a verification before they can even use their credit card to make a payment?

cheers,
:beer:

No, I think they can just plug in their info and go. However, it's up to the merchant to decide if they want to take the risk of accepting credit card payment from an unverified member.

--Tina

I've tried the direct PP interface via a shopping cart but was never able to get it to work.

Further, you can't do re-occuring payments with PP (not yet anyway). That means each month the customer has to intiate the payment. You can request payment from them but they have to reply for you to get paid.

Also, the way PP has thier rules and from what I've heard from others, if just one person complains to PP about you for just about any reason your PP account will be locked and good luck getting it unfrozen. That means 1) you can't receive any further PP payments and 2) you can't withdraw money already there.

This is kind of an old thread, but I was interested in some of your comments about PayPal and why you don't use it for collecting monies.

Would you mind placing some feedback as to what you would need to make PayPal work for you? Our Product team is interested in designing solutions based on user input and I would like to give you the opportunity to tell us what you would need.


Thanks!

paypal is the worst if you look at it hard enough your customers will actually have to sign up for paypal and become a paypal member to do so you would sell alot more with a normal merchant account

What I know is not all country are supported by PayPal. For a starter i will suggest you go to Revecom / Instabill types credit cards processing merchants which will provide you a control panel / shoping cart and they only bill you by % of your sales figure.

We are using Revecom. Here are samples of our site:
http://secure.hostkaki.com/order.htm




Besides Revecom, there are always some alternatives, here is a list of top 9 credit cards processing merchants:
http://top9.com/business_finance/payment_credit_card_proces.html

We use iTransact.com and have never had a problem. However, our office is looking at using PayPal as a voluntary alternative since epeople are asking if they can pay using PayPal.......but by no means is it going to be used to replace iTransact. I was against using PayPal because as far as recur billing, it's about as useless as money orders. However, our office told me PayPal supports automated recur billing. I havent checked out PayPal myself, so dont know if this is true or not. From reading this thread, it sounds like you have to have a credit card to use PayPal...so whats the advantage in using PP?

Originally posted by Webdude
From reading this thread, it sounds like you have to have a credit card to use PayPal...so whats the advantage in using PP?

That's a good question Webdude, but from a customers perspective PayPal could be worth the effort, for the following two reasons:

1. The customer has a domestic credit card valid only in his/her country. PayPal bridges this international payment gap as customers may transfer money through PayPal across many international countries including USA. PayPal does this through a wide network of global service partners located in each country.

2. Some customer's may prefer a centralised payment information gateway. For each payment you make through your credit card on a web site your payment information may be stored in the companies database for future transactions but with PayPal your payment info. is located only on one central server. This way you may not need to type in your credit card info. & worry about it on each site you deal with.

Personally, I would prefer a credit card payment against PayPal but at times PayPal saves the day!

Users do have to sign-up for an account, but there are other uses for PayPal outside of billing. Many users sell items, pay other people,etc. The account-based payments system gives a fair amount of flexibility to our users.

Users that are interested in specific needs for their product/service are more than welcome to drop me a line.