I have been accepting PayPal through my MonsterCommmerce online store and I seem to be losing sales from customers unwilling to pay through PayPal (they call in their order instead). I wonder how many orders I lose because I do not accept credit card payments through an online merchant account. Does anyone recommend that I take the next step? Thanks!

Good question! I have been accepting PayPal for a while and thought I was doing ok, however, when i started accepting credit cards, i saw my orders increase by almost 50%. I would say the merchant account is very much worth it. Maybe you could put a survey on your site and ask your customers.

I recommend accepting credit cards.

Ask a few of your friends if they have a credit card, chances are they do. Ask them all if they have a paypal account some might some may not.

It also depends on your customer base. If you are selling to an older or un technical crowd your in some big trouble just taking paypal.

If you have a lot of ebay auctions you might be able to get away with it.

Merchant accounts are a must. If I go to a site and can't order in real time, I move on!

What's the difference between accepting Paypal and straight credit card payments? Don't they both use credit cards?

no, paypal people must have a paypal account or register with paypal which is a big pain in the...

CC's must be the way to go

Paypal is a good way to go in some cases though because you can require payments from the Paypal user's bank account instead of just CC payments, similar to an e-check. Eliminates possibility of CC fraud. I'd recommend both - Paypal's pretty much free, so it's a great secondary method of payment, at least.

You absolutely want to have credit cards accepted on your site. But, Paypal is great to have. Some shoppers on the internet strictly use Paypal... and you don't want to lose them.

I think the more options you have, the better. Customers like choices.

More options = More Sales

Let people pay in anyway they want!

If you want to signup with PayPal click here:

PAY PAL

If you want to signup for a Credit Card Merchant Account click here:
MERCHANT ACCOUNT APPLICATION

I would recommend using both.
If your missing either one, your missing sales.

There's been alot of security issues with people bypassing the Paypal secuity and fooling the system into looking like a purchase was made, but never was. I think some are getting skeptical about PayPals validity.

Scorpio,
I say hogwash. i have accepted thousands of transactions with paypal without any security related problems. Also if you get a paypal order on your site you better login to verify payment was made. This makes good business sense. Dont scare people about paypal. it is great. But overall i would say i get 80 - 90 percent of the people paying with credit cards and the rest with paypal.

If I accept all major credit cards, what kind of increased sales can I expect to get from adding PayPal. I guess the question is, what percentage of people out there refuse to pay with a credit card, but would pay with a PayPal account. Any experience? Anyone out there who added PayPal after taking credit cards?

I guess it depends on your business, but take a look for yourself...

PayPal Info

We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express & Discover along with PayPal & Certified Check/Money Order.

75% of our sales are V/MC
10% PayPal
7% American Express
6% Discover
2% Certified Check/Money Order

You really need to present as many payment options as you can. I would say that V/MC is a must for almost any online store.

We accept Certified Check/Money Order for those low tech customers who still don't really feel safe shopping online and for persons under the age of 18 who may not have a bank account/credit card.

We actually were receiving customer emails asking if they could pay with paypal so that's when we added the PayPal option. We did notice a slight order increase after adding PayPal.

American Express! They'll tell you that customers using a Amex card will spend more at your store. This is TRUE! On average Amex customer orders at our store are atleast $20 more per order than V/MC.

What if you don't accept Paypal, but the potential customer has over $500 in a Paypal account? You could only accept V/MC but maybe the customers V/MC are maxed and they can only use Discover?

Everyone has a preferred payment method, not everyone is the same. It's best to give as many options as possible to not lose sales to your competition.

Robert Hufault

Not Just Keychains... Ultimate Keychains!
www.ultimatekeychains.com

My online store
PayPal - 60%
Online credit cards - 38%
Check - 2%

As you know that sometimes some customers found our online store have problem to check out. Some of them could not successfully check out via online credit card payment and their orders become not finalized orders. I will ask them to send me an order information by e-mail and then place an order for them. I will select Other payment method on my store when I place the order. After that, I send them an e-mail to tell them the total order amount and an URL linked to PayPal explained how to send money via PayPal. I got the payment very quickly from my customers and they are all very appreciated for my help.

The PayPal URL I sent to my customers is as below:
U.S customers - PayPal Send Money

International - PayPal Send Money

I usually wont buy from a site that only has paypal. Accepting credit cards show you are a legitimate business.

However, you want to make sure the the cc company you choose will handle transactions smoothly. I changed to a new merchant account last week that processes by verisign, and lost $15,000 in one week due to transactions that couldnt be processed due to errors. I changed back yesterday to my old processor and and sales went back up (300%) the minute I changed. That is significant and frightening. If you have only used verisign you wouldnt know that there is a problem. After my big wake up call last week, I think that people should be informed of this problem.

Wendi
wendi.com

We found that to be true when we were first starting. Alot of customers were emailing to ask how long we were in business and were placing small 'test' orders for around $5-$8 and then after getting the order come back and place a real order. We have no idea how many customers we lost during this period, but sales did dramatically increase in the coming weeks when we added support for all major credit cards.

I have both on my site. CC and PayPal

Reason being is that when PayPal went to the Debit Card many sellers on E-bay like to use their debit cards for purchases. Kind of like a quasi cash for them.

Traffic is nothing monumental to say the least. If you are a drop shipper from one of those oversaturated drop shipping companies----I don't suggest this to you for any reason. PayPal has a MUST SHIP IN 10 DAYS POLICY.

I have read in many places where people get dinged with a high number of Charge Backs due to slow drop shippers. This gets real expensive!

PayPal has raised their rates twice since e-bay took them over---big surprise here. The more ebay makes the more they charge it seems.

The problem with Pay Pal is they don't provide global coverage, granted that most E-Com transactions occur in the countries that have Pay Pal coverage but not all merchants (like me) are and therefore we are excluded from this network, we even went as far as to set up a US company, get a bank and then got booted for "not accessing the site from the country registered under".... I have yet to find where it says I HAVE to login from where I registered the company...

Cheers

Chris

I get tons of Paypal payments and about 1/3 visa/mc. Our site is not up yet so I expect the visa/mc to be about 75% of ours after we opem.
The biggest advantage for me is I use my Paypal Mastercard account for vendor purchases to get my 1.5% back. It really adds up over the year. We kept almost $5K last year and that was simply from purchases.
It's like taking the 2% early pay discount with a regular supplier.
Either way, I take every possible payment option that I can.
Never throw a bucket of water on a hot buyer!

I found my customers did not want to sign up with PayPal if they did not have an account. So many people emailed me and asked for a phone number to call in there order. When I started accepting on my merchant account by phone my sales increased 10,000 a month. Now I have changed my web site to and gave myself a new look and sales are still increasing. Now I accept online orders by credit card or PayPay with no phone orders. The credit card option is far better than PayPal. Not having a phone seems to have little effect on the sales. When I do get orders from PayPal 80% of them are not finalized. I have called many of the customers that did not finalize to find they did not realize and wished to complete the sale. Most completed the sale over the phone with a credit card. If you do not have a merchant account I would strongly suggest making the call today. You will see your sales double almost immediately. Good luck to those who stick it out with PayPal as the only form of payment accepted.

www.sellz4less.com
I do agree that you should try to give the customer any payment option. If they want to pay you via carrier pidgin you better open your window for the next few days.
I personally use the money from my PayPal account for personal use. The money I collect with my merchant account stays in my business.
The 1.5% cash back PayPal offers is great but really they do owe it to you. The rates are too high to start with. The features are much to limited. The daily limits are way to low. For me when I add all that up it is like a nuce around my neck. The daily limit really gets me. $3000, Are you kidding! It's my money and I can only spend $3000 a day. What if I wanted to buy something simple like a TV that cost $3001? Sorry but you can't spend your own money today.

Bottom line -
Accept PayPay but do not rely on them. My merchant account is the back bone of my company! Accepting any where’s between 20 - 30 K a month and before Christmas up to 50k. When I was accepting PayPal only I was lucky to take in 12k in a month. My eyes are now open and I see a merchant account in order to succeed and grow.

I have to agree that YOU MUST OFFER EVERY PAYMENT FORM UNDER THE SUN.

Some we like better than others (fees charged back to us), but that's the price of business.

paypal, online-live, manual (phone) and everything else I could come up with except for diners card who wanted WAY TOO much of a cut from each sale. Besides, less than 1% of my customers over a 5 year time frame used diners card.

I am just starting out and would like to accept credit cards. Right now I accept through paypay and electronic checks through another company.

What merchant/gateway provider would you recommend? I think the biggest thing slowing me down is the opening of a seperate checking account for just the business. Sound like the will not let you use your normal checking even if your company is a Sole Prop.

A possible alternative to paypal's merchant account could be ikobo's merchant account. I've seen it at work, and I must say it's really ok. I'm not too familiar with fees, and all of that, but from what reviews I've read, ikobo's fees are supposed to be competitive, as well as them having a far better country coverage than that of paypal. I personally am using ikobo's person to person money transfer service, and if their merchant account program is as good as their p2p transfer then I would strongly suggest them. Anyway, you can convince yourselves by checking put www.ikobo.com. Cheers!