Checking Out Online Payment Methods
Credit cards are king. If you do nothing but take MasterCard and VISA, you’re pretty thoroughly covered. Nearly everyone who can afford a computer has one or both of them. Toss in American Express for the high-end customer and the business client, and you’re all set. But some alternatives are out there, and you may want to add some or all of them to your setup.
PayPal
When it comes to online payments, one very impressive option is PayPal, now part of the eBay empire. PayPal takes a slightly different approach to online payments, and it’s worth a good look. With PayPal, you can accept credit card payments without having a merchant account, and your customers can pay you directly from their bank accounts.
What do you have to do? Not much. Just sign up for an account at www.paypal.com. (See Figure 14-1.) What does it cost? Nothing, unless you actually make some sales. In that case, you pay $0.30 per transaction and anywhere from 2.2 to 2.9 percent of the selling price on top of that. Rates can be higher for international sales.
PayPal offers a complete payment system for you to use at no extra cost. You can integrate its free Web tools into your site’s pages easily. Throw in a thorough payment-reporting system, which PayPal does, and you couldn’t ask for a ...
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