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PayPal for business review 2022

This article will review the pros and cons of PayPal for business. Is this a good solution?

If you are looking to invest, or have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me or use the WhatsApp function below.

Introduction:

Before getting to our topic for today, i.e., ‘PayPal Business Review’, let us have a look at some other things such as ‘Definition of an Online Payment Gateway’, ‘About PayPal’, etc.

Online Payment Gateway – An ‘Online Payment Gateway’ or ‘Online Payment Platform’ is a channel for businesses or websites to collect online/digital payments from people.

Usually, these types of payments are collected with the help of the business’s website or an app.

In simple terms, an online payment gateway is a bridge for the transactions between a business/website and another party, which can be another business, individual, etc.

In general, online payment gateways (PG) make use of bank account as a medium between the individual making payment and the platform that receives the money. 

Examples of the PG transactions that can be made these days are net banking, credit cards, debit cards, Unified Payment Interfaces, or online wallets. 

PayPal: 

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PayPal for business review 2022 2

PayPal is an online payment gateway, which provides cost-efficient services to businesses and individuals.

Along with the services related to payments, PayPal also offers a wide range of services related to debit cards, credit card readers for small businesses, line of credit, etc.

Of most other online payment gateways available nowadays, PayPal happens to be one of the secure methods of sending payments digitally.

About the company – ‘PayPal Holdings, Inc.’ is a company based in the United States that supports all the activities that are carried out worldwide. 

Coming to the trading details, PayPal is traded as ‘NASDAQ: PYPL’, ‘component of NASDAQ-100’, ‘component of S&P 100’, and ‘S&P 500’. 

In the beginning, it was originally established with the name ‘Confinity’ and later merged with ‘X.com’ in the year 2000. After being listed on a stock exchange in the year 2002, eBay acquired PayPal on October 3rd, 2002.

A detailed review of PayPal:

Most people think of PayPal as only an electronic wallet or online payment gateway. There are some other features that are offered by PayPal as well. 

First of all, let us have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using PayPal (especially keeping businesses in mind).

Pros:

  • It is very easy to set up an account and use it.
  • Being one of the biggest players in the field, PayPal is known by many clients and customers.
  • Clients or customers won’t be required to have a PayPal account in order to make a payment.
  • Invoices can be created and sent via an account.
  • The fees charged by PayPal are low compared to many other rivals in this field.
  • There is availability for setting up recurring payments.
  • PayPal can be integrated with various types of shopping cart systems. 
  • PayPal is also considered one of the safest options available in the market.
  • There is even availability of various pricing plans with flat rates that are suitable to everyone.
  • PayPal is an ideal option for the merchants who will not be taking payments on a higher volume.
  • Can borrow money and capital. 
  • PayPal can also be accessed easily with the help of a mobile device.

Cons:

  • The customer care and support of PayPal is not as efficient as it should be. 
  • It’s not a very apt option for industries that are subject to a higher amount of risk.
  • PayPal has all the necessary power to shut down an account whenever they want to. In this case, the frozen funds won’t be made available to the user for months.
  • The Seller Protection feature of PayPal does not cover digital goods.
  • The fees of PayPal are hefty when it comes to chargebacks or reversals.
  • The time taken to withdraw funds from a PayPal account can take up to 3-5 days.

Pricing:

The pricing details about PayPal can be found by using the website of PayPal. However, in order to provide clear insight, we have covered some of the most important details regarding the transactions.

  • Web Transactions: 2.9% along with another $0.30 per each transaction.
  • Swiped, dipped, or tapped while making an offline transaction: 2.7% of the transactions made.
  • Keyed: 3.5% along with $0.15
  • Virtual Terminal Transactions: 3.1% along with another $0.30 per each transaction.
  • Transactions for non-profits (online): 2.2% along with $0.30.
  • Transactions made under the MicroPayments plan: 5% along with $0.05 per transaction.
  • Chargebacks: $20

PayPal also has a specific plan for companies that allow transactions under $10 per each transaction, which is 5% along with another $0.05.

You should keep in mind that the PayPal Payment Pro plan charges a monthly recurring payment. Henceforth, you would have to spend another $30 per each month for additional services and extra features.

The primary reason that companies avail of the PayPal Payment Pro plan is because of the ability to let customers stay on a website while undergoing the process of checking out.

Usually, in the earlier days, PayPal used to redirect customers to their website. Although this is not considered a huge issue, most companies would probably want to keep their customers on their websites as long as they can.

Customer Support:

One of the major drawbacks of using PayPal is their ‘not so efficient’ customer support. 

It is rather considered a horrific experience when a customer’s funds have been considered to come under the risk category and will be tied up in the risk department of PayPal.

Even though PayPal is making a lot of efforts to change this, there is a possibility that funds worth thousands of dollars might get frozen inside a PayPal account.

The customer support of PayPal, even known for its better support will take up a lot of time and effort from you by making you stay most of the time on its community form or knowledge base.

In other words, PayPal would want you to sort out all of your problems on your own. Therefore, they would usually refer you to some specific documentation that could help you sort out your issue by yourself.

The blog of PayPal is updated consistently, and you can be able to find some relevant information. 

Coming to the important details regarding customer support, you can connect with the support team with the help of a phone or an email. There is even a possibility of connecting via social media, but it is not that effective.

The phone line is available from 4 AM to 10 PM on normal working days, and 6 AM to 8 PM on Saturdays and Sundays. All the above-mentioned timings are according to the PST (Pacific Standard Time) time-zone.

It would have been considered very efficient in terms of customer support if there was an availability of a live chat feature for solving the problems.

PayPal for Businesses:

Although all the details discussed earlier are also about PayPal for businesses, let us have a more detailed look at all the features and services offered for PayPal (for businesses).

It has been estimated that there are around 305 million accounts and 22 million business accounts that are registered with PayPal. Therefore, it is a general choice of many businesses to have PayPal as an option during the checkout process on a website or any other physical store. 

Why PayPal for Business? – As a merchant making sales online, most people will be able to gain access to various services (including free and paid) that are considered to be highly beneficial.

There are three options available, out of which two won’t be requiring monthly fees.

Moreover, access will be granted to a wide range of eCommerce integrations that include Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce.

In the case of the offline merchants that opt for PayPal, access to various POS integrations along with PayPal’s in-house mobile card reader as well as mPOS app (bundled under PayPal Here) will be offered. 

Some other exquisite features include:

  • Online Invoicing
  • Marketing Solutions Package
  • Virtual Terminal
  • Recurring Billing service
  • Many Developer tools

Even though there are many other payment processors that offer similar tools, PayPal is the most preferred option.

To support the above-mentioned statement, a recent study concluded that most customers (approximately 88.7%) will opt for PayPal rather than choosing any other payment gateway.

Keeping all the important things in mind, the PayPal business account is efficient when compared to others in this field and it makes it very easy to send money back and forth.

Difference between PayPal personal account and PayPal business account – Considering the similar features between these two types of accounts, both accounts allow people to send/request money, make payments, and receive payments for the sales made.

However, sales would be concluded as sales of Goods and Services, which will impose transaction fees. PayPal will make sure that nobody will be able to avoid these transaction fees by mislabeling the transactions.

But, with the help of a PayPal business account, you be provided access to eCommerce-related services and features such as creating shipping methods, tracking inventory, granting partial access to employees, and signing up for exclusive services such as PayPal Here.

How can I create a business account? – Given below are the requirements for creating a PayPal business account.

  • Email address.
  • Business contact number.
  • Legal name of your business. Your name should suffice if you are the sole proprietor of the business.
  • Last four digits of SSN.
  • Employer Identification Number (EIN) – if you are the sole proprietor of your business and state that in your business type, you won’t be required to provide your EIN.
  • Date of birth.
  • Residential address.
  • Bank details such as the name of the bank, account number, and routing number.

These details will be enough for starting a business and making sales. However, once you begin to accept payments and start making money, PayPal will require you to provide further documentation such as bank statements.

As discussed before, PayPal is known to have a tendency of freezing or terminating merchant accounts, even if it has the slightest doubt of troublesome activity within those accounts.

Just make sure that you will be able to provide all the necessary documents that PayPal will ask for so that you might be able to avoid such inconvenient situations.

How to set up a PayPal business account? – First of all, you should click on the ‘Sign Up’ box located on the topmost right corner of PayPal’s website. 

If you are already having a business account with PayPal, you might be asked to do any of the following:

  • Sign out of the current PayPal account.
  • Set up a separate business account with the help of another email address.
  • Set up a business account by deleting the current PayPal account with the help of the same email address that has been previously used to create an account.

After that, you will be asked to enter some information regarding the details of your business. These details have been clearly mentioned in the ‘How can I create a business account’ section that has been given earlier.

Once after providing all the required details, your PayPal business account will be created and be ready for usage. 

After the successful creation of a business account, you will be asked if you want to send or request money and whether would like to send an invoice. 

This will begin the process of setting up PayPal Invoicing, which is a free service that allows to create and send invoices that have been customized.

The remaining procedure – After this, you will have to select services that you would like to make use of. At this step, you would have to choose an online payment package that you would want.

In case you are into business involved in offline sales, you will be offered a chance to set up a PayPal Here account. 

In the case of an online business involved in online payments, you can connect to ‘Set Up Online Payments’ or ‘Connect to a Marketplace’.

Anyhow, you can always return to these signup options by going to ‘More’ on the PayPal toolbar and selecting the ‘Business setup’ option thereafter.

Payment setup:

‘Set Up Online Payments’:

By clicking on ‘Set Up Online Payments’ you will be presented with two options. 

You can either make PayPal as your primary payment method where you can process all your payments with the help of PayPal, or you can make it as an additional method for receiving payments.

If you choose to process all your payments with PayPal, you can select between ‘Option A’ and ‘Option B’.

With Option A, you can work with eCommerce solutions that have already been integrated with PayPal. With Option B, you can add HTML buttons to your business website by yourself.

You can be able to choose from the options that might seem beneficial by clicking on the ‘Compare options’ link.

If you choose to add PayPal Checkout as another way to get paid, you are presented with another set of options.

Option A will allow you to have a pre-built payment solution, whereas, Option B will allow you to have PayPal APIs to add PayPal Checkout to your business website.

You can simultaneously click on ‘Compare options’ and find out the beneficial method for you.

Once the payment setup has been completed, you will now reach an ‘Account Setup’ tab. Click on that tab to complete finishing all things that are required to set up your account.

The general things that should be done in this process are linking your email, linking your debit card for Instant Transfers (optional), linking your bank account, making sure that your business name looks clear to your customers, and getting a PayPal Business Debit Mastercard (optional).

Based on the payment options that have been selected earlier, there are 3 different payment packages for receiving payments online. They are:

  • PayPal Checkout (was known as ‘Express Checkout’ earlier).
  • PayPal Payments Standard.
  • PayPal Payments Pro.

In case you have chosen PayPal as an additional method of payment for your website, or if you already integrate with an eCommerce provider, the best option available for you would be ‘PayPal Checkout’.

With ‘PayPal Checkout’, you will be offered:

  1. PCI Compliance, where the customers will be redirected to the secure website of PayPal to complete the payment.
  1. Contextual Checkout Buttons
  1. Localized Payment Methods, which have been specialized for European customers.

PayPal Payments Standard is considered a fully-featured payment solution when compared to PayPal Checkout. PCI Compliance as well as eCommerce integrations are offered with the Payments Standard as well along with some additional features.

Features of Payments Standard are as follows:

  1. Undertaking payments from customers via debit cards and credit cards, without having the need to have a PayPal account.
  1. Accept PayPal payments (needn’t be said).
  1. Sending online invoices for payments made faster.
  1. Accept payments that have been made with the help of 25 currencies from over 202 countries in the world.
  1. Simplified PCI Compliance.
  1. No fees for long-term contracts, setup, withdrawal, or cancellation.
  1. Non-Profit discounts made available for the transactions made with the help of PayPal.
  1. Phone support (toll-free).
  1. Offers financing options for purchases ranging more than $99.

One thing that should be considered here is that PayPal Checkout and PayPal Payments Standard have no monthly fees. Whereas, PayPal Payments Pro has a fee of $30 per month.

Let us have a look at the features offered with PayPal Payments Pro:

  1. Hosted Checkout page:

Payments Pro allows you to keep your customers stay on your website until the completion of the checkout process, and even lets you customize the design of your checkout page.

In order to provide a hassle-free experience to the customers, PayPal Payments Pro will be considered the best way. However, PCI Compliance should be done by yourself.

  1. Virtual Terminal:

The Virtual Terminal of PayPal will allow you to receive payments through phone, fax, or mail. After getting hold of a customer’s card number, you can key in those with a browser window.

The above-mentioned feature is an advantageous feature and allows you to take payments through various means. Some other rivals such as Square or Spotify will allow you to have this feature without any additional fees.

  1. Recurring Billing:

In case you are involved in a business of selling subscriptions, PayPal Payments Pro will allow you to have recurring billing tools to boost your productivity. 

However, the Recurring Billing feature would come with an additional fee of $10 per month. For this feature, the PayPal Checkout method does not charge any sort of additional fees.

Other details:

It should be kept in mind that you will be needing the help of a PayPal developer for doing all other necessary things. 

PayPal Here – PayPal Here is a suite of services that provide specific features for accepting offline payments with the help of a POS app as well as a PayPal card reader. 

First of all, you have to sign up for ‘PayPal Here’ and after that, you are required to download the mPOS app on your mobile phone. 

Then, sign in to the app and order a card reader. The 3 card readers currently made available are ‘Mobile card reader’, ‘Chip and Swipe card reader’, and ‘Chip and Tap Reader plus Charging Stand combo’.

New PayPal Here account holders are able to acquire the former two card readers for free of cost. In case you require additional units, you will be charged $24.99 for each unit.

The Chip and Tap reader combo will cost you $79.99 and you can be able to purchase it on PayPal.

PayPal Credit – PayPal Credit offers credit for your customers that is considered a beneficial option among their other types of credit cards. 

Customers, while making a transaction of more than $99 will be charged no interest if the amount has been paid fully within a time period of 6 months. 

This is a huge advantage to your customers while buying something from you and is considered an incentive provided on your behalf. 

PayPal Business Loan – You can apply for a business loan from PayPal and borrow anywhere around $5,000 to $500,000. 

However, you would have to abide by the terms and conditions and meet the minimum requirements for this such as minimum annual revenue or minimum period for being in business.

PayPal Working Capital – You can borrow an amount ranging from $1,000 to $125,000 with the help of this feature. 

Similar to the Business Loan, you must satisfy the minimum requirements.

Bottom Line:

If you are looking for an alternative to PayPal, there are some other payment gateways such as Square, Shopify Payments, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Stripe, WePay, TransferWise, etc.

 By checking out the data that has been presented above, you might have come to a conclusion about whether or not PayPal Business might be beneficial for you. 

Despite some of the cons of PayPal, it is still considered a famous and renowned Payment Service provider out there in the market. However, it may be disadvantageous to some people.

Therefore, by keeping all things in mind, our verdict about PayPal for Business is that it is a pretty simple and good option. Therefore, people can opt for it after carefully considering all the factors.

That being said, we hope that this article provided the information you need and clarified all your doubts.

If are in need of a personal financial advisor or a wealth manager, you make use of the best-in-class financial solutions offered by us. We wish for you to have a wonderful career/business with bright profits arising from all of your assets.

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