Merits of PayPal

[dypaul]

I've noticed that not many game companies use PayPal method of payment as an option. Can anyone here shed light on why this may be so, whether there is a serious drawback to using PayPal as an additional option of payment? Thanks.

[James C. Smith]

We offer it as a payment option. I don't see any problems with it.

[Roulette]

We offer it as a payment option. I don't see any problems with it.

Ditto...we've never had any problems with it.

- Roulette
http://www.superluminal.us

[papillon]

Laziness (not wanting to set up the paypal-handling scripts or handle the transactions manually) or having heard too many nasty anti-paypal rumors. Which, while often true, are not really widespread enough to mean that you should avoid accepting it, especially as many people are very fond of using it.

There are reasons to avoid paypal for very large transactions. Not so much for small ones.

[Hamumu]

The only things against taking paypal that I know of are:

1. You hate it so much yourself you refuse to have an account, and thus can't use it to accept payments.

2. Don't use it as your only processor, because the buyer needs to have a paypal account to pay you, which is a lot less easy and normal than having a credit card.

It's one of the payment types I accept and I have no problems except that I haven't implemented any of the automated features for it, so when I get paid by paypal, I have to manually fill the order.

[Yossarian]

2. Don't use it as your only processor, because the buyer needs to have a paypal account to pay you, which is a lot less easy and normal than having a credit card.

Paypal does accept straight purchases with a credit card *without* needing an account. They have put in a buy it now feature that lets customers just enter in their billing information and pass it on straight to you. This has been in place for close to a year now, and quite a few of my customers use it.

With that service in place, NOT using paypal seems kinda silly to me. They take a LOT less per transaction than anyone else does, and you can still do enough customization (if you choose to) to automate most of your purchasing tasks.

Paypal's rate is 3.5%, which means a lot more money in your pocket than if you used Plimus or Regnow. In fact, I'm really perplexed by most of the people on this board that choose to use Plimus so much. A couple days of coding the backend website stuff you need to automate paypal transactions would certianly be worth getting 7% of your money, wouldn't it? $1,000 in sales for you through paypal would save you $65, equivelent of making 3 more sales.


File Type To/From Name/Email Date Status Details Action Amount ($) Fee
Payment From XXX XXXX Jan. XX, 2005 Completed Details $100.00 USD -$3.20 USD
Payment From XXX XXXX Jan. XX, 2005 Completed Details $30.00 USD -$1.17 USD



PS - Paypal is also a widely recognized brand, and is owned by EBay, which *everyone* knows about. This makes it a far more trusted system than Plimus, which nobody knows, or any others. And never discount trust when it comes to users making internet purchases.

[Hamumu]

I didn't know they did that, sounds good. I use a merchant account, so I pay even less than that, at the expense of even more backend work.

[PoV]

Another evil problem with paypal is exchange rates. They tag on an addition 2% to exchange Canadian currency (for example) to US. Which sucks.

[Sybixsus]

In fact, I'm really perplexed by most of the people on this board that choose to use Plimus so much. A couple days of coding the backend website stuff you need to automate paypal transactions would certianly be worth getting 7% of your money, wouldn't it?

I guess you're assuming everyone is selling keys? Because all the bandwidth that Plimus ( et al ) give you on full version downloads, not to mention updates, resends, etc doesn't come free.

[Jack Norton]

Paypal is also a widely recognized brand, and is owned by EBay, which *everyone* knows about. This makes it a far more trusted system than Plimus, which nobody knows, or any others. And never discount trust when it comes to users making internet purchases.
I have BOTH system of payment on my site. Plimus and Paypal. I get about 1 paypal sale every 10 plimus ones. Wonder why...? ;)
Having only Paypal as the only payment system can make you lose many sales. It's a nice alternative, but I wouldn't use exclusively that one...

[oNyx]

Swreg+paypal isn't fun at all.

They want a 3€ or 3$ "manual processing" fee... and it takes ages. It's already more than 4 days later and I didn't get my key yet. That's damn slow.

The games I ordered in japan (and payed with paypal) where without additional fees, on nice cds, send via air mail... and it took always only a week (only ~17€ per game+shipping etc).

So if you use paypal (as alternative), use a simple paypal buy now button and take care about that yourself. Paying 3 bucks for that "service" is really a bad joke :/

[Yossarian]

I guess you're assuming everyone is selling keys? Because all the bandwidth that Plimus ( et al ) give you on full version downloads, not to mention updates, resends, etc doesn't come free.

Quite a few people have posted some schemes on getting cheap download sites, and paypal offers the ability to refund, and some buyer protection as well, so those are pretty much a wash. IMO, saving the money on the sales would be worth it.

Now, I'm not saying Plimus isn't a good solution for many, however there seems to be a very strong and negative bias towards paypal from users here that I guess I don't understand. Is there really that much bad publicity about them out there that the general public is afraid to use them? The circles I run in online (with the exception of here), pretty much have it as the defacto standard for accepting money online. No setup fees, free accounts, seems to be secure, large trusted company own it, and very small fees (US only?).

Obviously the best solution would be to have your own merchant account, in which transactions drop to a couple percent. I have had bad experiences with those, though, as they charge an arm and leg in either setup fees, or they require long term contract committments at pretty bad monthly rates. Plus you have to factor in the $800 for certificates (debate their merit, but people *do* expect them), etc etc... meaning you need to be expecting some really strong sales immediately to make them worth it.

[Hamumu]

$800!? Mine's $150 a year! You DO need fairly strong sales to support a merchant account, simply because there are a pile of monthly fees, mine's about $50, I believe. Doesn't seem like all that much, but you have to factor it in when comparing the rate to a reg service to see if it's really worth all the extra work. I think setup fees were $100 or something, I don't recall (no commitment required, though).

Merchant accounts are definitely not for everybody, and what you've said about paypal makes it sound like a good choice. I think the reason paypal is so underused by indies is its long and storied history of crapulence. Probably eBay fixed that up when they bought it, but we're the geeks, we remember tech stuff. Paypal has a terrible reputation among everyone I know, and I've never even heard it discussed as a primary payment option before. Can we hear from anybody else who uses it as primary processor? I wonder if the history is the only reason it's not widely used...

[Yossarian]

To be fair, I have had one single issue with Paypal. They do not accept credit cards from all countries, and so if you sell a lot in Croatia, Chekoslavakia, or other non supported countries, you will not be able to sell to those people. So far for me that's meant about 2 lost sales and one guy who mailed me a 50 euro note in an envelope... Otherwise it covers north and south america, most of europe, and asia (I don't have an African customer yet, so not sure on them).

@Hamumu

Have the rates on certs dropped recently? Last time I purchased one (early 2004 for the day job) it ran over $400 per year from Thawte.

Just added up the cost per transaction difference as well for the heck of it, and figure out I'd need more than 150 sales per month to overcome the merchant account fees. So more than that and it makes sense, less than that (which is probably most of us), and it won't.

[princec]

oNyx, cancel that order, I'll sort you out. It's total shit that they have the cheek to charge extra and then still take 4 days over it.

Cas :)

[Hamumu]

I don't know general rates, but I just renewed my Geotrust for $130 a year for 2 years. That's renewal price, maybe it's a good savings. Maybe Thawte is the Network Solutions of SSL.

[Tom Cain]

My wife recently got a GoDaddy certificate for $29.95.

[billy7777]

I've been using paypal for over 2 years now - ONLY paypal though...
but now im wondering if I would get more orders with something else?????


www.lasthalfofdarkness.com (http://www.lasthalfofdarkness.com)

[Jim Buck]

I believe you're leaving a LOT of money on the table if you only have PayPal-based payment processing.

[ErikH2000]

Billy, I took a look at your site and the order page. It seems to me that although you can place an order without signing up for a PayPal account, the option is severely understated on PayPal's login page. I am talking about this page that your site transitions to after "Buy now" is clicked:

https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=wrfstudios@aol.com&undefined_quantity=1&item_name=Last+Half+of+Darkness+CD-ROM&amount=19.95&shipping=3.00&return=http://www.lasthalfofdarkness.com/main2.htm

So here on this page a customer can click the button for "If you do not currently have a PayPal account click here," and I didn't follow the order pages from here all the way (not in a buying mood right now ;) ) but this would let the customer buy without signing up on PayPal, right? The problem is, IMO, that this page customers get sent to looks like a PayPal login is required to continue.

Is there any way to improve on this? Like can you send people not interested in a PayPal membership directly to the page where payment info is collected? If not, then I think the PayPal order pages are poor from the perspective of people who aren't members and don't wish to be.

-Erik

[gpetersz]

PayPal's got a very mixed reputation on the net. There are many anti-paypal sites. I didn't know about them until my account became limited and 200 euros've been frozen. The reason: For a while I only received payments from my clients (I am a freelancer artist) then on one sunny day I tried to pay with my paypal account (for software) without being verified (the verification happened later, I had to wait for my german bank account, I am from Hungary) then I tried to resolve, but it cannot be for some not understandable reason. Now I wait for 180 days (why?) to hopefully get my 200 euros to my account. You can read other horror stories about PayPal, but I am not here to ruin their reputation, I guess my story is as much my fault as theirs.

In my opinion it would be a great service if it would been ran a better way.

Maybe that's why some companies fo it otherwise if there are other ways.

[patrox]

I use plimus only, because it's nice to have answers in timely manners. ( a few hours, even on the week end... ). As far as i know only BMT and Plimus offer that quality of service.

pat.

[AndyN]

I initially accepted payment just through PayPal but moved to Plimus. The day after I removed the PayPal payment link I got three enquiries about paying with PayPal so I've put it back on my info page.

I get roughly the same number of sales from both Plimus and PayPal at the moment, so opinion is obviously divided on it.

In the US I think people can make PayPal payments without signing up as members, but the option hasn't been made available to UK PayPal users yet. Once that's sorted maybe I'll see a rise in the number of PayPal sales.