Alternatives to using paypal like google checkout

Most people have heard of paypal. Paypal is heavily promoted on its auction site ebay, which owns paypal. If your a serious online seller you can't afford to just use paypal. They are very expensive, and charge some of the highest rates on-line just to receive payments.

This gives sellers a difficult choice, do you build your business using a single payment provider? Or do you look at alternatives to your payment options apart from paypal?

Without question, if your using paypal to sell online you will run into problems. Paypal is known for being secure. However, paypal is really made for the security of buyers. Its great if your buying, but if your making a living online selling on multiple websites, then having paypal as your only option will eventually leave you in a difficult position.

Paypal reserve the right to put your account on hold for any reason. This can be for having too many claims from customers, to having to add more details to your account, or even if you fail a credit check that they randomly run across accounts.

Although it might feel like paypal controls the payments on the internet, that is far from it. If you think about the payments you make on websites, and online, you will notice that there is loads of other options apart from paypal.

Paypal is perfect for buying and selling on ebay, but that's how you should think of paypal. It is not even close to some of the other payment alternatives you can use instead. If you don't already use these alternatives then consider implementing them as soon as possible, so you don't become just another casualty of the great paypal scam.

Paypal can easily become a viscous circle. If for any reason your account is limited, you will suddenly find you can't receive any new payments. This means your buyers will be given a message that you don't accept paypal payments. If your existing buyers find out you have a problem with you paypal account, they can sometimes claim refunds, which ends up then causing a bad spiral. You can't take any more payments, until paypal review you account, and decide if you should be allowed to continue or not. 

Google checkout is one of the best alternatives to paypal, as although its very similar to paypal in the structure and setup, it has buy it now buttons like paypal, google checkout is BUILT for sellers. That doesn't mean its unsafe for buyers, far from it. It means the sellers are better protected from account limitations for unknown reasons.

There are only a couple of conditions you have to meet, which includes placing your google checkout button at the start of the checkout in the shopping cart, and the confirmation that your bank account is linked via deposits.

Although google checkout is a new product, it has already gained lots of followers from its trusted brand recognition, and its simple to setup, and even easier to use if your a buyer. 

Moneybookers is a great way to accept payments online in the UK. They are a secure payment gateway company and make another great alternative to paypal.

They are financially regulated, and require good verification before you can start using them for accepting lots of payments. Although they don't support buy it now buttons, they really aren't for that. They will process credit and debit card payments only. They pride themselves on having 100% secure services, and even offer an escrow service for more expensive items, so both the buyer and seller can be protected. 

Paypoint is a well known payment company in the UK. They are offered at most local shops as a payment method for a variety of bill paying, and are very recognisable with their bright yellow logo. Paypoint offers a very good paypal alternative. They provide you with an online payment service that means you can take payment from customers credit and debit cards directly through their secure site. Customers are redirected to a single payment screen where no  login is required, your customer just puts their card details in, and you can accept the payment right away. Paypoint is a very easy to intergrate into most of the main ecommerce shopping carts.

They charge monthly fee, and a percentage per transaction, but its very cheap, and you don't need to set-up a separate merchant account.