Alternatives to Paypal

michelle2612_2

Hi there, not sure if this is being posted in the right place but as a newbie to the forums hope I will be forgiven!
Does anybody know the best alternatives to paypal, I was badly stung by them witholding £500 of my money a few years ago due to something that they had on my address, i.e previous tennant! or so they say. I want to be able to have a go at selling online but obviously need a facility to accept payments without paypal! Dies anybody have any good experiences of other companies?
Thanks in advance :j

StaffsSW

ebay and Paypal go hand in hand, so you won't be able to use ebay with Paypal.

Lara

stevew8975 wrote: »

ebay and Paypal go hand in hand, so you won't be able to use ebay with Paypal.

Unless item is collected and cash paid on collection?

Just wondering if you can you accept payments direct via online banking?

soolin

Lara wrote: »

Unless item is collected and cash paid on collection?

Just wondering if you can you accept payments direct via online banking?

You can offer people cash, cheques, postal orders etc but all aucitons will clearly show the'paypal accepted' logo and virtually no one pays by any other means.

As above if you are selling on ebay then you must have a suitable paypal account. Even if looking at other sites like ebid, they recommend paypal.

One of the only places you don't need it is Amazon as they have their own payment method

Even on collection only items paypal will be shown as the default payment method.

Lara

Thanks Soolin. I'm not a regular seller on ebay but have decided to try my luck as have loads of clothes with tags on! Ooops! Just wondered about online banking as thinking it would save on paypal fees which tied in with ebay fees amount to a lot of money!

soolin

Lara wrote: »

Thanks Soolin. I'm not a regular seller on ebay but have decided to try my luck as have loads of clothes with tags on! Ooops! Just wondered about online banking as thinking it would save on paypal fees which tied in with ebay fees amount to a lot of money!

Direct bank transfers are the absolute best, I have offered it to all my buyers for years, unfortunately none will use it, they all want to use paypal.

michelle2612_2

I was actually looking at setting up a page on facebook! but obviously need to look into rules and regs on this, just like a business page. I am happy to offer bank transfer as it would only be friends anyway but wanted some alternative method ... apart from paypal!, has anybody used nochex or anything similar - what is google checkout or is that only linked to websites!!

bris

Nochex was one I used years ago, but paypal soon had them on the run, as well as all the other online payment systems like it. People still use them but not very many. You will have to live with the fact that without Paypal, your selling activity will be slow, real slow. You may get the odd person who will use BT, but for everyone of them you will lose 20 paypal customers.

Crowqueen

Yup. Paypal is the only thing I'd use buying from a stranger online - because I like the assurance that I will get what I'm paying for or get my money back. There's two people in the transaction - buyer and seller - and the buyer needs to feel comfortable with the seller because they are the one handing over the cash. You do have some quite significant responsibilities when handling people's money and you can't arbitrarily decide you will only accept payments that are safe for you - because then the customers will run a mile.

Accepting cheques is also difficult nowadays - many people have not used their chequebooks in a while, thanks to them being phased out for most high street transactions. I would send cheques, I suppose, but I have no idea where I put my chequebook and last used it a couple of years ago to pay a reiki therapist - then I started getting cash out to give him.

If you want to sell among your friends have a jumble sale, or a bring and buy (and you could do it for charity as well). Online, selling to the general public - forget it - you are going to have accept some form of electronic payment, and if you don't have a Paypal account, that will close down the main places. Amazon is probably not suitable for what you have to sell - I don't believe it's very easy to sell clothes there as a private seller .

Sorry we can't be more help. About ten years ago you'd have been fine - but even eight years ago (2004) when I started selling people advising me suggested I accept Paypal as it would expand the range of people I could sell to. Now people expect or even demand Paypal - it's just something you can't avoid. In some ways it's a shame - but it's how the marketplace has evolved.

kazca

You will also need to carefully consider the reduced seller protection if you decide to use paypal outside of ebay.

I use paypal on my websites and whilst there is protection for non delivery on an item where a tracked delivery service is used, delivery to anything other than a confirmed paypal address is not protected.

Unauthorised transactions in this instance lead to a chargeback and the nightmare begins!!

Started using paypal around 10 years ago and as far as I know they are as good as anyone else to use as a merchant service on a small website. Anyone know any different be very glad to hear.

Anthorn

The ebay Accepted Payments Policy lists aternative payment processors which may be used on ebay:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/accepted-payments-policy.html