PayPal – A Quick Overview

PayPal is one of the most popular services used for online purchasing. It can be considered an Online Financial Broker as it acts as a third party for holding money. PayPal has gained a solid reputation for business integrity through its policies and practices which has earnt the trust of both buyers and sellers.

Buyers do not need a PayPal account to purchase your products or services online. When directed to PayPal to pay for their purchases, your customer has the choice of signing in and  using their account or entering their personal details and credit card details to complete the purchase. It does not require any special software or technology, which has boosted its popularity amongst all levels of buyers and sellers globally.

PayPal provides a number of account types that you can choose from, depending on your business. Here is a link to the PayPal Australia account types:

Account Types

When you sign up for a business account with PayPal, the transaction fees are simple and easy to understand. The fees charged by PayPal are dependant upon your revenue each month. To understand this a little more, here is a link to the PayPal Australia fee structure for business accounts:

Transaction Fees

PayPal earns its revenue by charging a percentage of the transaction that has taken place. There are many sellers whose revenue may only be a few hundred dollars a month to sellers who are earning tens of thousands of dollars each month, both can easily calculate the cost of a transaction and absorb this cost into the price of their product or service.

When choosing to offer PayPal as your payment method, you will need to complete a few settings to properly configure PayPal so it integrates smoothly with your website/shopping cart.

If you are considering using PayPal as a payment option for your website, here are a few resources that should help you set up and configure your account.

Account Setup – Step 1
Account Setup – Step 2
Account Setup – Step 3