I was just thinking about how much the webmaster community relies on PayPal. Do you think we'll see some competitive alternatives in the near future? It's driving me crazy how PayPal is getting greedier and greedier with commissions, etc.

You might but Paypal has the tap on the market right now. I am not sure if paypal does this or not but they should do a graded commission rather than just a flat one.

If you're a personal user, no commission. If you're a business user, commission is about 2% of all money people send you. You're forced to be a business user if you accept payments through your website or else you can't accept the payments at all.

There are a few alternatives to PayPal, but I can't think of their names at the moment. They don't have the world-wide recognition PP does, nor the built-in interfacing to things like eBay, but they are an alternative to receiving online payments. I'll let you know when I find out what they are.

Well, I know there is 2Checkout.com

I wouldn't recommend them if I got paid to :)

I never used them. Why not?

Because you don't get paid until after they've called the buyer to verify they've received whatever service they bought from you. If the buyer wanted to save money (read: screw you) all they'd have to do is claim they never received the product, and you wouldn't get paid. Period.

I signed up with them for about a week, and then I got curious why the test purchase I made never went through. After reading (again) their FAQ, I found that statement. If you're selling service-type items (i.e.: labor), or non-physical items (i.e.: web hosting) and the customer never "receives" the merchandise, you don't get paid. They also only pay you once per month, instead of x days after they receive payment from the customer, like a regular merchant account.

Eww, thanks for the 411.

n e time