Is Your Small Business Accepting PayPal?
The internet has changed the way that people spend their money and the growth in online shopping in recent years means that offline businesses are now competing for customers in a worldwide market. One of the advantages of online shopping has been the easy payment options that transfer money with the click of a mouse. The need for online payment systems to handle the huge volume of online money transfers has seen the launch of a number of online payment services, and of the current crop the most popular is PayPal.
With 94 million active accounts1 using 25 different currencies, PayPal has become a standard part of many people’s online toolkits like their hotmail account and their Facebook page. As PayPal has expanded it has become a useful vehicle for all manner of online payments, and recently it has begun to look at taking its services offline as well, making Paypal available through mobile devices and EFTPOS services in many kinds of real world businesses. PayPal is now further exploring its offline markets with the introduction of their own payment card as well as a free credit card reader that is compatible with both iPhones and Androids7.
Paypal started as an internet financial services company in 1999 and was acquired by e-bay in 2002 after dominating the auctions on that site. In order to make PayPal easily accessible to a wider range of businesses, they launched PayPal Merchant services in late 20032. Since then PayPal has spread across the internet and is now handling 6 million transactions every day3. With the current plans to widen their merchant base by introducing the “PayPal Wallet”4 in November 2011 (and recent affiliate agreements with large POS companies, retailers5 and restaurants using their Tabbedout app6), PayPal is set to rival many large credit card companies and banks for a share of the electronic funds transfer business. As the PayPal Wallet becomes more widely available, it will become an easier option than the tap-and-go credit card transaction systems that are being offered by their competition because it won’t require vendors to invest in any special hardware to access the system.
There are many advantages for small businesses that offer PayPal as a payment option to their customers. It is easy to set up PayPal on your business website and the standard free package allows vendors to accept credit card transactions as well as the direct funds transfer service that PayPal offers. For a monthly fee of $5, vendors can perform PayPal transactions on their own website and is compatible with a number of shopping cart platforms like Magento and OS Commerce. For $30 a month, PayPal allows users to create their own checkout pages and adds a virtual terminal to the package. The introduction of the PayPal Here7 app has made all of these options available offline in retail locations with the transferred funds being available in the vendor’s PayPal account within minutes of every transaction.
Of all of the innovations that have originated on the web, PayPal is one that is both practical and flexible and the applications for it are broader than just an online funds transfer system. If your small business is already using EFTPOS services, adding PayPal to the list of cards that you accept will be a simple, while practical, offline payment solution. PayPal will soon be just as popular with offline shoppers as it already is with online consumers. If you are interested in integrating PayPal into your small business, you will need to open a PayPal Merchant account. InfintechDesigns.com – a trusted SEO company in New Orleans can help you add PayPal to all of your other online and offline transaction options.
References:
1. https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2011/03/what-it-takes-to-be-great-at-payments-3/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paypal
3. https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/04/paypal-growth-helps-fuel-strong-ebay-q1-earnings/
4. http://mashable.com/2011/11/02/paypal-wallet/
5. http://gigaom.com/2012/03/06/paypal-debuts-in-bars-restaurants-with-tabbedout-integration/
