My honest review and professional advice is that if you’re currently working out how you’ll receive payments from clients or customers…
You Need PayPal
Not want it, need it (regardless of how you feel personally about PayPal).
Today, and for a long time now, PayPal has been the most popular way to pay and get paid. Why? Convenience and security:
Put Yourself in Your Customer’s Shoes
- Wide payment coverage. Anyone (from almost anywhere), can pay via PayPal (and they don’t need to have or sign up for PayPal in order to pay you which is a common misconception). Note — There are instances where someone cannot pay you via PayPal, very rare, and likely because of a very specific reason, which probably means they couldn’t pay you online anyway.
- Simple, so simple. Ever get sick of registering basically all of your information every time you want to buy something? After the initial PayPal setup, buying things online is a breeze, click of a button.
- Security. No matter who you buy from whether it’s a respected site like Amazon or an unknown Mom and Pop shop, you never reveal your credit card number. At the least, you share your email address and at the most, your mailing address (if it’s a tangible item).
If You’ve Heard a Horror Story or Had a Bad Experience with PayPal
I’m not going to beat around the bush, people have had problems with PayPal, see: PayPalSucks.com. But, keep in mind that this is no different than any other company, especially one with millions of customers.
Now, let’s break down some info here:
— Psychology wise, it’s important to know that consumers are far more likely to complain about something when they’re mad, than they are to praise something when they’re happy about it. Basically, if they’re happy about something, there’s no reason to go on about it, it’s been settled and they’ve “checked” it off in their mind already. Now, if someone feels wronged or they disagree about something, they want the world to know about it.
Let’s say 20% of PayPal customers were upset for one reason or another, that 20% might do more talking about how awful it is than that 80% (who’ve moved on with their day) are to say something nice. And if you’re already a business person, you know that you simply cannot please all the people all the time.
— Legitimacy wise, I don’t mean to discredit complaints. I’m sure over the years there have been legitimate complaints and PayPal has probably improved a lot over the years, naturally. But, considering how much people like to complain and blame something or someone else besides themselves, how often did the problems arise from the end-user themselves?
I’ve done a lot of customer support in forums and by email and have literally worked with thousands of customers now. In that time I’ve learned that 9/10 times when someone complains that you messed something up or you must have forgot something or this, that, or the other, it was actually an error they made, plain and simple. I’ve seen subtle implications to obscene language.
Although, I’m almost certain that it’s probably a user error, I always remain polite and professional. When it turns out it was them, it’s probably 1/100 that I’ll get an apology. That’s fine and that’s business, but the important note is that people are likely to complain, are often not entirely accurate about their complaints, and even if they are found to have made a false complaint, they rarely retract their statements. This is fact.
— Another point is to consider just how popular PayPal is. Because of this, all their flaws will be headlines compared to other payment gateway issues. And I guarantee you can and will find complaints about anything you could possibly use.
— Let’s get real. With any business you have to have a margin of acceptable loss, not everything is going to be perfect all the time. For the few issues you might experience using PayPal, that will always outweigh the loss of convenience and possible loss of potential customers due to not supporting a PayPal option. You just have to use PayPal, at least in addition to your main gateway. It’s a huge mistake not to, you’re losing a lot of money.
My Experience with PayPal
I’ve used PayPal for over six years now and have been very pleased. In that time, I’ve only had a few complaints, nothing entirely noteworthy, but important to me nonetheless.
See this article I wrote.
It’s important to note that these are very specific issues that don’t really reflect the primary purpose of PayPal, to pay and get paid instantly and securely. I love PayPal and I will always use PayPal. When I have a problem, I try and offer helpful feedback for a better service instead of just venting my frustration purely for a selfish reason.
The pros of using PayPal will always outweigh the cons. This is based on about six years of experience and hundreds upon hundreds of transactions of both making payments and getting paid.
PayPal: Basic vs Premium vs Business Account Types
Basic — This is only suitable for non-pros or non-business people, for light online shoppers. Do not sign up for this option if you intend on receiving payments online. This is not suitable for businesses, or even individual freelance professionals. Too many limitations and it’ll be a headache later to switch over.
Premium — This is suitable for all individual professionals to small groups, organizations, and businesses.
Business — This is suitable for medium to large businesses in which have a verifiable business license and will need to handle many and large payment transactions.
Still unsure? Ask me anything about using PayPal in the comments below and I’ll give you my honest opinion. Ready to get going already?: