advice We need a formidable alternative to PayPal

[Haroon Basha]

PayPal is famous because it is easy, handy and instant but their charges are really bothering a lot for small traders. PayPal is like a Cancer, we have to live with it unless and until a formidable alternative or competitor is born afresh. PayPal deducts nearly 5.5% as their commission, then our bankers add their own charges plus if we use the Credit Cards, the card issuer charges at their Selling rate and we receive the funds in our bank account, the banker credits the funds at their Buying rate only. Thereby we lost nearly 10% just to receive funds from one account to another. Horrible indeed, but the tragedy is no one is there to question their excessive charges. There is general feelings among the PayPal users that the commission rate should be reduced.

 

[DAN.COM]

https://www.adyen.com/ this cannot be an alternative to PayPal. It has only 3,500 customers! Nevertheless, I wanted to open an account, but I cannot because they do not have service in Saudi Arabia.

We use Adyen at Undeveloped, however Adyen is not really a Paypal replacer.

I think Transferwise & Payoneer are direct competitors of Paypal but not Adyen.

Adyen is, in essence, a meta-payment provider. They have integrated all payment solutions and offer a single point integration to merchants/marketplaces etc via their API.

Only a limited selection of customers are accepted by them but they have the biggest companies including Google, Facebook as clients. So their customer count doesn't tell much.

 

[wwwweb]

Hopefully a crypto currency becomes the norm across here soon.

 

[MapleDots]

Good suggestion @MapleDots, you please shed more light on credit card machine, it may be helpful for many. Thank you.

It's called a merchant account, this is what I use...
https://www.costcopaymentprocessing.ca/index.html

They will have the equivalent for the USA under costco.com

Each country will have something similar as well.

I have a number of online stores and process almost 2 million per year so I just add my domain sales to the same merchant account and use it for most of my transactions.

I also use Paypal a bit for namepros but the fees are just stupid.

 

[MapleDots]

Best way around it I found was to become a credit card merchant. In other words get your own credit card machine. I don't know if that is possible in your neck of the woods but I can sell and bill your credit card directly from my office without a middle man like paypal. I can also put funds directly on your credit card via a credit card credit.

It works great for me, but you have to have an actual business licence to set up for that.

As far as getting a viable option to PayPal, I heard eBay is switching to something else.... maybe that can be pursued.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

An important topic, and thanks for starting the thread @Haroon Basha . I think those of us who live in North America are spoiled by more favourable treatment in PayPal compared to countries where they add a surcharge.

Big players can take out a merchant account directly as @MapleDots indicated but not a realistic option for most of us.

I actually like registrar marketplaces that allow you without costs to use the funds for their own services. Most of the funds I get from domain sales (well all essentially) I put back into other purchases, so I am happy with this arrangement.

Does a Square account work? (I have never used their service although my daughter does)

To some degree we just have to accept some transaction costs for handling funds - I mean there are real costs. Just good to have competition to keep them reasonable for all.

Bob

 

[NYJimbo]

Crypto is a way.

Not practical. Very few people have a crypto wallet. No typical end user is going to want to have to get involved in crypto just to do one transaction.

 

[-EM-]

Skill (moneybookers) has been around for many years and they support crypto currency.

 

[xynames]

PP is very expensive for international transactions but the only way I am aware of to get paid via credit card where the chance of a successful claim of unauthorized charge by the payor is very low. To keep this risk lowest must make sure to be paid directly from a verified and confirmed PP, to your verified and confirmed PP.

If you get paid from international via a regular credit card and via your regular credit card processor and the buyer claims unauthorized charge you will almost always lose the chargeback dispute.

 

[theodore_zhou]

If you Can use alipay or wechat,alipay is always free from member to member.and from your alipay to your bank account is Also 100% free.
Wechatpay is free from member to member.and when you draw money from Wechat to your bank account,it charged 0.1%.

 

[xynames]

I have never lost a charge back but I traditionally don't sell outside of North America.

First of all: we’re talking ONLY about card not present transactions (internet):
There are chargebacks (disputed transactions) and there are chargebacks (cardholder did not authorize charge - fraud). If you’ve never lost a chargeback then you’ve never had a stolen card used on you (or a card where the card user claimed it was stolen).

 

[BaileyUK]

I am actually a bit surprised that more people don't have merchant accounts, it is very easy to get and all you have to do is register as a business. I assume it's similar in India?

these swipe machines seem to be becoming fairly standard kit for the average UK household these days, even my mum now has one (all for just private personal accounts and credit/debit cards - machines are issued by your bank for a nominal charge)

 

[MapleDots]

That's interesting, seeing as eBay owns PayPal.

Not any more, they have separated and ebay has already announced a switch away from paypal.

I have to go back and figure out where the article was, they even mentioned the new companies name.

 

[maxtra]

PayPal is famous because it is easy, handy and instant but their charges are really bothering a lot for small traders. PayPal is like a Cancer, we have to live with it unless and until a formidable alternative or competitor is born afresh. PayPal deducts nearly 5.5% as their commission, then our bankers add their own charges plus if we use the Credit Cards, the card issuer charges at their Selling rate and we receive the funds in our bank account, the banker credits the funds at their Buying rate only. Thereby we lost nearly 10% just to receive funds from one account to another. Horrible indeed, but the tragedy is no one is there to question their excessive charges. There is general feelings among the PayPal users that the commission rate should be reduced.

As a US seller I honestly do not mind the fees. They are the most convenient and recognized payment service at the moment and I think it is worth it. If a competitor with less fees and better service or a crypto becomes mainstream I would happily hop on board though

I do feel for international sellers, the fees are very excessive in that case

 

[singhhooda]

PayPal is famous because it is easy, handy and instant but their charges are really bothering a lot for small traders. PayPal is like a Cancer, we have to live with it unless and until a formidable alternative or competitor is born afresh. PayPal deducts nearly 5.5% as their commission, then our bankers add their own charges plus if we use the Credit Cards, the card issuer charges at their Selling rate and we receive the funds in our bank account, the banker credits the funds at their Buying rate only. Thereby we lost nearly 10% just to receive funds from one account to another. Horrible indeed, but the tragedy is no one is there to question their excessive charges. There is general feelings among the PayPal users that the commission rate should be reduced.

Yes, it has been several years and still no one is able to break the monopoly they have created in the market.

 

[Furquan]

Here is the one solution for people from "IN" who would like to own machine to do there own transaction like @MapleDots

https://www.mswipe.com


*I used to work here & still hold some interest

 

[biggie]

who is we?

paypal has been very good for domainers for long time
I've been using it from day 1

all of these services below: sedo/namedrive/fabulous/parkingcrew/domainhop/parkingpanel/parkingplace/parked/voodoo/bodis
/internettraffic/goldkey/smartnames/whypark/etc/etc, sent me some $ via paypal

and now, you say, it's like cancer?

imo….

 

[MapleDots]

Yep, the new alternative is going to be Apple Pay:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ebay-apple-pay/
It's nice to see their monopoly being pressured a bit at such a major venue.

Adyen was the announced name, a dutch company
https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/01/technology/paypal-ebay-payments-split-adyen/

They will probably give several options to open up the payment system.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

For Europe I can suggest BitPanda.com that allows FREE Cryptocurrency transfer between accounts.

As for Payoneer I don't think it could be an alternative to PayPal for they are a "mass payout" system more than anything else; it was great whne Payoneer Escrow was running because the accounts could be joined.

With Payoneer I believe you can request CC payments to cutomers but afaik you are not covered from chargebacks etc and that alone makes it a no no for me.

Agree. Chargebacks are what hold me back from getting a merchant account and accepting credit cards directly. I have a relative in the retail clothing business (brick and mortar as well as physical locations) and he told me he expects a certain percentage of chargebacks each month. He used to lose sleep over it and pull his hair out fighting it but he said its not worth it anymore. He just writes the merchandise off as stolen inventory. But with domains we cant really do that. We do not have 100's of small, medium, and large size of each domain name that we might expect to lose 1% a year due to chargebacks/theft/payment-fraud/friendly-fraud, etc.

We only have one inventory count of each item, they're all unique. If someone steals a .com from us, what then? How would one get that domain back? It would be a long and arduous task to get that name. (in my best shark-tank voice) So for that reason, I'm out.

 

[~ The 34 Year Buzz!!]

There are a lot that has never been released...

I am mostly familiar with honest people who had their Paypal accounts frozen due to a "sudden increase" of income.

... so what do you say about that?

Do not trust the Monster...

 

[maxtra]

Yes And I also love the fact they can freeze your funds because they choose to, or charge your account thousands of dollars when u authorize some other purchase, OH Wait I really love that the customer is always right.

I guess sh*tPay is good for under $100, unfortunately, I deal in the 1ks' of dollars.

Never happened to me, and I have received payments as high as mid $xxxx

My account is a business account, verified, has PayPal credit, US seller, etc. which might or might not have an impact

I also transfer away as soon as I receive a payment, I do not carry a balance

Thanks

 

[sircc]

they charge less for US account holders and charge more on international clients

Haroon, the potential for fraud in certain countries is high enough to warrant extra charges from financial institutions like Paypal. They're basically hedging their losses.

 

[LamsuanlunT]

I agree. A couple days ago I was to make payment for a website for $1063 which comes roughly to INR 74,000, add to that bank's forex fees of some $2500. That's a total of about INR 76500 whereas Paypal's currency exchange rate showed INR 78000+. Now Paypal always charge txn charges from the receiver's end, but even at the sender's end there's a difference of INR 2000 for which one can register 3 dot coms at godaddy without discount. Although a convenient method, their fees are too high and there actually are hidden fees in such cases as above.

 

[wwwweb]

Good suggestion @MapleDots, you please shed more light on credit card machine, it may be helpful for many. Thank you.

I don’t know if this an option that works for domainers from India.

Basically you are looking for a low cost micro payment processing option without being fee heavy, and forex steep, crypto is the tech behind this. There is a lot companies trying to beat pp, so far nobody has succeeded.

 

[ecomslice]

Revolut , look them up