Having a PayPal Account vs. Traditional Merchant Services
With the eCommerce expanding, business owners may be enticed to explore other payment processing options as a departure from traditional merchant services and credit card machines. Both provide online payment processing, but they cater to different areas of the market. Here we can explore the differences between a traditional merchant services account and PayPal.
What is PayPal?
PayPal is one of the leading online payment processing services, offering a host of benefits for business owners, particularly small business. Offering personal and business accounts PayPal services a wide variety of payment processing needs. However, PayPal may be a lot of smoke and mirrors in comparison to a traditional merchant services account.
Traditional Merchant Services
Most businesses strive to keep up with the continually changing marketplace, thus offering in-person and online sales. If you are one of these organizations, you need a company to provide you with online tools in addition to credit card machines and terminals that you can add to your cash registers. Traditional merchant services will provide you with all the hardware your business needs to satisfy the needs of your in-person patrons. With a specialized agent assigned to your account, you can be sure that you are receiving the best payment processing solution for your business.
What are the Fees?
Fees are listed among the biggest determining factors when choosing a payment processing solution. On average, PayPal charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. While the initial ‘pay per transaction’ fee might seem like the better deal, PayPal does take into account the type of business you have, how long you have been in service, or the types of cards you process. Combining all of these factors together can potentially give you a lower rate when subscribing to a traditional merchant service. When assessing the rates, the amount of volume your business does is a key player. If your business does over $10,000 a month in sales, traditional merchant services are going to be the better solution for your bottom line.
What are the benefits of each for the business owner?
Flexibility is important to most business owners. PayPal offers a good selection of online shopping tools that you can add to your website, but these selections are not very flexible. Traditional merchant services allow you to customize your online shopping cart to reflect the personal style of your business.
Using online payment processing makes some patrons hesitant in regards to keeping their identity protected. PayPal offers some piece of mind for merchants with the fraud protection solutions, but it can be hard to contact them. Making a claim can be tedious and in the end, may never be processed. Traditional merchant services that provide credit card machines have specific responsive teams whose only responsibility is to assist you and your company in resolving the fraud issue at hand.
Policies
Assessing the policies for contractual agreements between the two payment processing services is no longer a major concern for a prospective merchant. While PayPal has never had contracts, traditional merchant services are doing away with the standard contractual agreement and offering more flexible terms of usage for businesses.
Before making any large business decision, considering the kind of support you will receive may be a deal breaker. PayPal services are notoriously known for having bad customer service. Frozen accounts, no explanations, and poorly trained customer service representatives are among the chief complaints. Choosing a traditional merchant service, your account will be assigned a real customer service representative to help you navigate all your payment processing needs.
Evaluating what features are most important to you and your business will ensure that you get the most out of you payment processing provider.