I use paypal, even at the business level i only lose about 3% of the rate, which isnt a big deal IMO, if your doing business your going to pay regarldess.

everyone using or plan to use paypal should check out http://paypalwarning.com/

To be honest with you, they have a right to freeze your account at any time if they suspect fruad, they would do the same at your bank ;)

PayPal is a perfectly legal company :) and that warning site, if it wasl real they could at least do a better job at making it look decent.

Paypal might be alright if you are within they're area of coverage, which is quite small. Maybe I wasn't a lucky case but back when i had an account with them I had some problems with my account being frozen for no particular reason, and when I called customer support I had to wait a lot, and didn't even solve my problems right away. It took many calls and e-mails to customer support to get my account un-frozen. Note: I wasnt doing anything illegal like trading adult material or that type of activities.

carlson

You have the similar experience to me. I think maybe it was really caused by their narrow coverage. I have heared that paypal only runs well in USA,Canada and England. Other than these three countries, their sevices are not satisfactory.

Thats pretty much all of their real coverage. This is why now Im considering iKobo as a possible option. I have heard some good things about them. Has anyone used them yet? Let me know please.

DONT EVER USE 2CHECKOUT.COM!!

I used them for a few months and they screwed me out of almost $2000!!!! I sell eGoods so there really is no way for me to prove that the user received the item. So anyone that buys anything from me could say they never received it, and they do a chargeback. I get suck with a $80 bill plus $25 for the chargeback. It only took a few people to realize this from reading the 2checkout.com FAQs and i was almost out of $2000 from my own pocket!!! DO NOT USE 2CHECKOUT.COM!!! They provide ZERO fraud protection!

I don't like 2checkout because sometimes their servers go down and make their service unavailable. I have heard that sometimes they do not calculate the balances correctly so you actually pay them more than what you should. Also they have a $49 setup fee. I'd still like to hear some feedback regarding iKobo. They're supposed to be really competitive. Anyone used them yet?

I'm planning on using iKobo too... well, really because where I'm from is not covered by Paypal...

I have a Dutch Verified Business Account right now and enjoying it. It has helped me on the Internet a lot! Unfortn. I wish to downgrade when things settle down - back to a personal account and just use it to donate to charity, friends or purchase software with.

Anyway, in our country we have a few paypal-like companies, but they stay in the country only I think, I haven't seen them busy in the whole of Europe yet. Probably because they are new.

IF there is going to be competition, I hope they are smart and allow to transfer funds between the different companies.

I'm planning on using iKobo too... well, really because where I'm from is not covered by Paypal...

I also had this dillema for quite some time. For me, the fact that Ikobo has my country in their 170 countries list it was an important factor that made me signup. But this is not the only factor. From their website and from other commercial forums, I learned about the advantage of using this service like: iKard (Visa electron debit card from which I can withdraw funds whenever I like, quick and easy), 3.9% +0.29$ fee for merchant account which in my opinion is a low fee, no setup fee, no inter country fee, no multicurrency fee and no monthly fee. Soon they will have a feature that lets a paypol client to transfer his/her funds anywhere in the iKobo's coverage using ikobo.com. They are a dynamic company I think , that wants to satisfy their clients needs and this is good enough for me.

Ikobo has an IPN(instant payment notification) service. If your customer make payment, Ikobo will emai you imformation about the payment. I think we can use the imformation to setup an anti-fraud system. how do you guys think about this idea?

My first post here, since I typed:

+"alternatives to paypal" +subscriptions

into google.

I just got placed on limited access by Paypal because I was selling adult website subscriptions through them. Damn puritans - now I am looking for other providers.

I need a service that supports subscriptions, and would send IPN (instant payment notifications) for both subscription start and subscription end. The IPN should be made by a HTTP POST to my server (not only by e-mail).

Does someone know alternatives?

ikobo's IPN system will post a notification to your server at the URL you specified, at the time the payment is made. All of your customer’s payment information and a piece of encrypted code will be included in this notification. I think ikobo is a good alternative to paypal since they have better coverage and lower fees. I say you give it a try and post back here with your experiences.

Instant Payment Notification is what I need. ikobo doesn't have a script example so I ask you to send me one or at least expain to me the main ideas on how to make one. What software should I use ?

OK, since I myself am using ikobo's IPN (actually not me personally, the company I work for uses it), I'm going to give a helping hand to fellow businessman.

This is the way IPN works: a customer makes a payment to you or a payment is reversed or refunded, ikobo will post a notification to your server at the URL you specified (I think I've already mentioned that). Included in this notification will be all of your customer’s payment information (e.g. customer name and payment amount.)
After you have activated Instant Payment Notification, your server will be sent a notification every time you receive a payment. You will receive notification to the URL you specified, and it will include all of the payment information, as well as a password.

In order to enable the IPN system you have to follow these steps:
you log in at ikobo with your merchant account
the you go to the "sell" tab near the top of the page
select instant payment notification in the functions list
then you'll be taken to a screen for you to add your URL and to check to enable IPN
enter the required information
After these steps your server will be notified whenever a purchase is made, and you can create your database.
When you specify your notification URL and password your URL must be https. You must also enter a password. Each time ikobo sends you notification it will contain a pass through variable of the password below. Your server will confirm this password, verifying that the notification is in fact coming from ikobo.

You can also test your IPN processing scripts on your server, to see if they are working correctly. You can see sample IPN on the IPN section once you have logged in to your account.
Another good thing is that if your site is down, ikobo’s IPN system will try to re-post to your IPN script every 5 minutes for 4 days.

So basically you don't need any extra software except the scripts provided by ikobo. Of course you'll need an Apache web server or something similar (microsoft not recommended) as well as MySQL for example as your database software.
Good luck with your site!

Cool. I will try to do it myself. I hope you will help me in the future, because I might have some difficulties, because I don't know a lot of programming :(

Cool. I will try to do it myself. I hope you will help me in the future, because I might have some difficulties, because I don't know a lot of programming :(

Well, you are welcome, but I'm not that good a programmer myself. Only basic stuff. Truth is ikobo makes it quite easy so you don't have to be that good of a programmer in order to integrate IPN into your website. I'll be happy to help you in any way that I can!

What language does ikobo uses for the IPN scripts ? A programmer need to buy other software in order to be compatible with ikobo's scripts ?