PayPal Review- A Review of PayPal Features

PayPal's popularity was in no small way due to the ease of use, as all that was required to use it was an email address. PayPal quickly evolved and developed business services allowing merchants to sell goods online.

PayPal doesn't require you to have your own merchant account really all you need to start selling online. PayPal currently offers three types of accounts:

Personal: This is the standard PayPal account used for money transfer between individuals and online shopping.

Premier: For buying and selling. Accept credit card, debit card, and bank account payments.

Business: This is perfect for your online business. Same as premier but supports multiple users.

One of the most important aspects of PayPal is that there are no setup fees . This means that it doesn't cost you any money until you have actually made money as the fees transaction based.

The fees vary depending on whether you are USA or Non USA but are in the region of 1.9-3.9% depending on transaction amount and a minimum charge of approx 30 cents per transaction.

1. Shopping Carts:  PayPal has a free customizable built in shopping cart or integrates with hundreds of available shopping carts if you already have one.

2. Subscriptions/Recurring Payments: You can set up recurring payments - ideal for membership sites.

3.  Subscriptions/Recurring Payments: You can set up recurring payments - ideal for membership sites.

4. Donations: Probably the most commonly seen PayPal button.

5. Accept Multiple currencies- Accept payments in US, Australian and Canadian Dollars, UK pounds, Yen and Euro.

6. Realtime notifications of payments.

7. Test transactions in a test environment o you are sure they work ok.

8. Optional PayPal Accounts: The buyer no longer need to have a PayPal account to make a purchase. This used to be one of the main drawbacks to using PayPal. A PayPal account is now optional and not mandatory.

9. Customized Payment Pages: You can add your website colours and logos to PayPal's payment pages.

10.  Invoicing: You can send your customers detailed email invoices.   You can create and save up to 10 customized invoices using PayPal invoice templates.

11. Refunds: You can give full or partial refunds to your customers up to 60 days after the sale.

12. Integrated Shipping: Allows you to create packing slips for your shipments. Includes integrated shipping and delivery tracking for buyer and seller.

13. Automatically send order updates and status notifications.

14. Mass Pay: You can send payments to large groups-like affiliates.

15. Auto Return: When the buyer has made the purchase on the PayPal site he is sent back to a URL on your website. This can be used to confirm the order, a thank you page, or a download page or simply just to make sure the buyer stays on your site.

PayPal has many other features and they are continually adding to the features to get a complete list here and select merchant tools and compare features (left menu).

Regardless on the other payment options you provide on your website then because of its widespread use and instant recognition then PayPal should always be offered as an option.

For most websites then PayPal can be the only option. If you want to accept offline orders also support virtual terminals allowing you to receive the order via Fax and enter it into the PayPal system.

Related articles and resources:

• PayPal Buy Now Buttons