Paypal on website

I am setting up my website and hope to be online this weekend. As a startup operation, I cannot get VISA and MC accts so I set up a Paypal acct. They provide all I need to accept major credit cards and the transaction fees seem reasonable. Supposedly they will transfer funds to my checking account within a short time after the sale is complete. I've seen a number of people on the forum who use Paypal on their sites and I curious about their experiences with the system. Is it a good option for me as someone new in the retail market? Any things to watch for?

Thanks,
Jack

I like PayPal and have had no problems with it. PayPal is big and widely-recognized. Most people are comfortable paying through them and many people already have an accout with them. I personally would much rather pay through PayPal than through a small site that accepts credit cards directly, as I'm leery of giving out my credit card info to just anyone. Occasionally, I come across people who only want to give their CC# over the phone and then I have to use my merchant account. But this is pretty rare.

I agree with Grant; I like PayPal and haven't had any problems using it to accept payments for 4 years.

Google now offers a competing service; you might take a look at Google Checkout too.

I've used Paypal on my site for a couple years now, and it's worked great. Easy to set up, and easy to use. The only issue I've had is with users being redirected to the Paypal site, and not seeing the "Don't have a Paypal account? Click here to pay with a credit card" option. Paypal makes it really obvious how to pay if you have a Paypal account. If you just want to pay with a credit card, that link is a little harder to see. Feel free to purchase a large print from my web site, so I can demonstrate.

I concur with all of the above, I have used Paypal on my website for a few years and have had no problems. As Brent mentioned, the only thing I have had questions about is when people who have no paypal account try to pay using a CC. The paypal link doesn't make it real obvious, but the "pay using credit card" link is there if people look close enough. I have also used the Invoice option from the actual Paypal website (link is emailed to client), that seems to work real nice as well!.

Brent pointed out something important; if you use a direct payment link from your site, people who haven't used PayPal before might get confused about how to complete the purchase. (But you can add instructions on your payment pages.)

If your volume isn't more than a few transactions per week, you might consider (instead of a fully automated system) having your "Buy Now" link go to a contact form on your site, where the customer provides an inquiry to you, via email, regarding the purchase. You then initiate the PayPal payment process via email.

This has several benefits. You can "hand sell" the product, which builds customer trust/loyalty and provides the opportunity to upsell, plus you can make it easier for them to pay you with PayPal (or any other way). The only additional steps are them contacting you and you sending them a Money Request.

I have had a rare few clients who couldn't figure out how to complete the PayPal payment without assistance... only because they had not used PayPal before. By now, most people have, so you won't have much of an issue with this.

Still, I like to use the Money Request because it's more personal.

As Nick mentioned the invoice tool is nice too but it takes a few more steps.