Payment Options for online Retail

divawitch

Hello I'm new to the business forums.

I was just wondering if anyone has an online retail business and what method you use to accept payment.

Is paypal the best option?

Our business is online retail but we also have independant representatives who place large orders. so wasn't sure if there is a better option than paypal

paddyrg

PayPal is fine, not the cheapest but very trusted and convenient. If you want to integrate your website with Worldpay, Sagepay, etc then it'll take some site modifications depending on how your site is structured.

martindow

What you choose is also related to your turnover and number of transactions. If these are low Paypal is probably the best bet as you only pay a percentage on actual transactions. The downside is that Paypal comes with an image problem and many people don't realise they can pay by card without opening a Paypal account.

If you go with something such as Worldpay/Streamline there will be a monthly charge and payments for each transaction, typically with minimum payments of £25 month each. If your turnover is sufficient this is the way to go. Percentages for credit cards and fixed fees for debit cards are negotiable - the higher your turnover the cheaper they get.

divawitch

Thank you I really apreciate your input

Percy1983

Not so much form running my own business, but as a buyer I prefer paypal in many respects.

Firstly I don't have to go finding my card which is always nice, and the other big one is trust and I know I have backup with paypal which isn't so important with trusted retailers but when ordering from lessor known sites its great. This did pay off in one case as there was no shipment and I got a refund quite easily through paypal.

InsideInsurance

There are multiple ways of integrating with PayPal, certainly having it as an option is good, there is a strong school of thought that having off your site PayPal as the only option demonstrates you are a small/ new/ basic company and this can be off putting for some.

The "best" solution is to have onsite card processing with the option of going offsite to pay with PayPal. You can do this all with PayPal or alternatively could use the likes of StreamLine or SagePay for the onsite element and PayPal for the offsite.

divawitch

When I worked with avon when we got our invoice there was a girocheck thing at the bottom that people could take to the bank to make a payment, dos anyone know how that is set up, i can't find any info on the post office website, i know a lot of avon reps use that method because they don't have debit cards, so it would be good to have that option.

Savvy_Sue

I don't know about the Giro thing, but I do know that I hate it when PayPal is the only option. DH and I do have PayPal accounts, but we rarely use them, so can never remember our login details, much easier to find a card!

meanbean

Hi, I have recently set up an online retail venture and use paypal for receiving payments and find it good. I use Mal's ecommerce as the shopping cart which is handy if you need to offer different shipping rates, and this then interacts with paypal to process the payment to you.

I also sell on Amazon, and find that the Paypal fees for sales through my own website are a fraction of those incurred if selling through Amazon.

You can make it clear on your website that buyers do not need a paypal account and can just click the 'pay by debit card' option to try to mitigate the misperception that a paypal account is needed to purchase.

InsideInsurance

divawitch wrote: »

When I worked with avon when we got our invoice there was a girocheck thing at the bottom that people could take to the bank to make a payment, dos anyone know how that is set up

See http://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/files/candc/cpas/bpg_-_bank_giro_credit_vouchers.pdf

It is probably unrealistic for a small business to do it but of course you can print an invoice with the payment instructions on the bottom (ie acc numb, sort code, reference) and then the customers can pay in from their own bank

martindow

InsideInsurance wrote: »

See http://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/files/candc/cpas/bpg_-_bank_giro_credit_vouchers.pdf

It is probably unrealistic for a small business to do it but of course you can print an invoice with the payment instructions on the bottom (ie acc numb, sort code, reference) and then the customers can pay in from their own bank

Most of my suppliers give bank information on their invoices and encourage customers to pay this way. I'm sure they would rather be paid with a transfer than have cheques to bank and it saves me a stamp.