There are many good payment gateway options available today, but we use and recommend PayPal because we know it is a convenient, safer way of paying for goods or services as a customer. For a business, it is also a great way to get paid by your clients or customers, and with PayPal’s Buyer Protection Guarantee to help protect you from fraud, it is an extra assurance that your identity and money is protected. Another feature of PayPal payments that many people do not realise is that you don’t have to have a PayPal account to make a payment with PayPal! – you simply enter your credit card details as you normally would, and PayPal will send a confirmation email to you.
Though Wisefocus Designs does accept direct bank deposits, we find that PayPal’s features, like email payment receipt confirmation, invoice creation, recurring payments, and the ability to manually record payments makes it a very simple, secure and convenient way of invoicing your customers with a central system of accepting payments. If you have an e-commerce website, it goes without saying that providing PayPal as a payment option is a necessity for your online store’s check out, equally offering both the vendor and the customer’s protection. PayPal has been around for years now and is arguably the world leader in safe online payment methods with a good track record and reputation as an online payment gateway.
Of course, it should be noted that credit card providers do provide buyer protection for individual or fraudulent purchases made with your card but if only our established bank’s had improved on and implemented a set up like PayPal did years ago, I feel they would certainly have dominion over online payments today. Another thing to take into account is fees and charges: Bpay and Direct Deposit are generally free if done within Australia.
One example of what PayPal can do that bank’s don’t, is the ability to cancel recurring direct debiting from your credit card. We have had this bad experience ourselves, where, if money is withdrawn without our permission, we were advised by the bank to contact the the vendor and ask them to cancel our recurring payments – it is at the discretion of the vendor whether they will oblige you with this! In other words, once you have given a vendor the OK to automatically debit your credit card, your account, and money, is in their hands. If the vendor will not cancel the recurring automatic payment, your only option with the bank is to cancel the credit card and request a completely new credit card – and then remember to notify all of your other automatic payment vendors of the new card before you have services cut off and a bad credit mark put on your business. A few years ago, a conversation with one of our big bank’s Customer Complaints Liaison Managers regarding this very issue concluded with a recommendation from him that customer’s should use PayPal, as he does himself! The Customer Liaison Manager also expressed the opinion that there is no such thing as total safety in online transactions, and only careful diligence of your purchases and by checking your account transactions will it help you to avoid being robbed of your hard-earned monies.
It is very easy to set up PayPal accounts for personal, business, or both. As a business you use PayPal for receiving payments online, in person, on mobile phone or by email. You just download an app to use on your phone or tablet and purchase the Paypal Here card reader that allows you to process credit or debit card payments. The PayPal Here devices can be purchased from suppliers like Officeworks for less than $100!
