There are many advantages of using PayPal as a payment processor for your online business, including the ability to access funds quickly, keeping credit card merchant costs under control, providing an optimal customer experience, fraud protection, & more. Moreover, PayPal offers three business plans that online retailers can choose from, depending on the features they require for their business. Here’s a look at how these plans compare to one another.
Option #1 – PayPal Standard
Not surprisingly, PayPal’s most popular payment option is also its least expensive with no upfront set-up costs! With PayPal Standard, you have the ability to accept credit cards or PayPal payments wherever you conduct your business – on your website, or by swiping cards on your mobile device. What’s even better is that your customers don’t need a PayPal account to do business with you, and setup is a snap!
The beauty of this plan is that there are no set-up costs, hidden fees or monthly charges. PayPal charges you only when a customer makes a purchase on your website. Also, PayPal is fairly straight-forward to set-up and no programming skills are required. In fact, you can start accepting payments on your website in as little as 15 minutes!
Other key features of the Standard plan include the ability to email customized invoices to your buyers for faster payment and a free mobile card reader that allows you to accept payments and checks via your mobile device.
Option #2 – PayPal Advanced
At $5 per month, the PayPal Advanced plan not only gives online retailers all the features offered in the standard version, but also allows their customers to check out directly on their website instead of linking to PayPal. This means that customers never have to leave your website and log-in to PayPal in order to pay you – They can do everything right from within the shopping cart! This is a great option to eliminate shopping cart abandonment.
The Advanced Plan also offers a “Bill Me Later” feature, an option to purchase items without a credit card. This streamlined payment service works with the most popular shopping cart platforms such as Magento, OsCommerce and ASecureCart.
Option #3 – PayPal Pro
The premium PayPal Payment Solution costs $30 per month and offers all the features of the Standard and Advanced plans, along with the ability to design and host your own checkout pages. Online retailers can use the PayPal API for full control of design and content of their checkout process. You can control the entire customer experience and also customize the data fields, form layout and color themes. PayPal Pro also serves as a complete credit card terminal, allowing you to accept credit cards via phone, fax, mail, or anywhere you have internet access.
Putting It All Together
Which of the above payment solutions is the right choice for your online business? PayPal outlines all the benefits and doesn’t hide fees, so choosing wisely is a matter of a just little bit of research. Because none of the payment solutions require long-term commitments or monthly premiums, you can always switch to a different plan at any time if you find your needs have changed over time. A handy comparison chart at https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/compare-business-products is a great place to start.
With PayPal’s wide range of payment solutions, you can focus your energies on your business, not your billing!
