paypal.com

I’ve been using www.ebay.com now for the best part of two years. In that time, I’ve sold loads of different things, but mainly music CDs. In my experience, the way to really maximise your chances of getting good loot is to open your auction out to the global community. Sadly, this can lead to delays and complications for both parties, because cash payments take a long time to arrive. For my latest batch of auctions – some 500 in total – I decided ...
...within my auctions, if I wanted to reduce the grief for everyone concerned.

One of the most popular and well-known virtual banking facilities is managed via www.paypal.com. I’d seen the payment method advertised some time ago, but when I originally tried to sign up, I found that I needed a bank account in the USA. Fortunately, this is no longer the case and Paypal has literally revolutionised the end to end auction process.
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I’ve been using www.ebay.com now for the best part of two years. In that time, I’ve sold loads of different things, but mainly music CDs. In my experience, the way to really maximise your chances of getting good loot is to open your auction out to the global community. Sadly, this can lead to delays and complications for both parties, because cash payments take a long time to arrive. For my latest batch of auctions – some 500 in total – I decided that I really needed to enable an online payment method within my auctions, if I wanted to reduce the grief for everyone concerned.

One of the most popular and well-known virtual banking facilities is managed via www.paypal.com. I’d seen the payment method advertised some time ago, but when I originally tried to sign up, I found that I needed a bank account in the USA. Fortunately, this is no longer the case and Paypal has literally revolutionised the end to end auction process.

REGISTRATION AND STUFF

Paypal was recently acquired by eBay and reading through the blurb on the homepage, it states that the Paypal site will gradually become integrated with the main eBay site. At the current time, however, you must register on each site separately. Your user name on Paypal is your email address – an option that some users are not always comfortable with, but it does generally make life a lot easier. When you sign up, you are presented with three account options (personal, business or international) - make sure you follow the international link, otherwise the site will assume you are in the USA. Paypal is only available in certain countries, although a cursory glance down the list shows that most countries are now eligible for membership.

You give a basic level of information – name, address, contact telephone number and a preferred currency. Paypal now accepts payments and accounts tendered in five currencies, namely Yen; Pounds Sterling; Euros, Canadian Dollars and US Dollars. This is a welcome addition, as up to a month or so ago, the only available currency was US Dollars, which rather complicated the process of having fund paid into a US account. Provided you can bank with one of these five currencies, then you should find Paypal to be very useful. You also have to set up details of a credit or debit card, which will be used to add funds to your account. At registration, $1.95 is taken from your account, which is then subsequently refunded – this ensures that the card is valid.

Security is a real priority on this site – for obvious reasons – and so the account administration process is all managed via a secure access. You have to choose a password, as well as two security questions in case you need to validate your identity. To prevent automated account set up, you also have to copy some numbers into a box that are presented on the screen – it proves you aren’t a computer programme. Once you have signed up, you are sent a welcome email, which contains a URL that will enable you to activate your account. To do so, you need a specific verification code that can only be found on the card statement for the account you used for the $1.95 fee. Until this transaction is complete, you will not be able to withdraw funds from your account nor will members be able to pay funds into your account.

One of the things that I really like about this site is that although it is very secure, the pages load and change quickly, because they are free from the clutter of advertising and unwanted banners. Things are kept really simple, and if more integration is to take place, I hope that eBay will bear this in mind.

When you first set up your account, you also need to register a bank account, into which you wish to deposit any funds withdrawn. It’s important that you set up the details of the account correctly – Paypal make a charge of something like £15 if a payment is returned due to incorrect bank details. A useful feature of this is that you can have more than one bank account registered – so you could have one Paypal account, which then deposits funds for a number of individuals.

THE ACCOUNT OVERVIEW

Once you have logged in to the site, you are presented with a personal account home page. This is a relatively simple affair that contains tabs at the top for each of the major functions required, and a recent account activity summary below. This is basically a statement of any credits, debits or withdrawals that you have made from your account. The statement is arranged in a suitably logical manner, with the date, transaction type and value and details of the Paypal account receiving or sending the cash. The account overview will also show you details of auctions that you have set up for automatic payment from/into your Paypal account. On eBay, for instance, you can offer people the facility to pay for an item immediately, at a higher price, before the auction closes. If you link the auction to your Paypal account, the payment is transferred immediately, without the need to exchange details with the winning bidder.

Like eBay, your Paypal account will also have a status. If you follow the registration steps and verify a card account on your Paypal account, your account status becomes Verified. Verification is seen as a positive thing within the Paypal community, because it means that you have complied with all the security measures. Additionally, after your account name, a number is shown in brackets, which indicates the number of other verified members who have made a payment to you – it’s a bit like the concept of the Circle of Trust here on Ciao. When you follow the steps for sending money, the user account information as above will be visible to the person making the payment.

ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

The layout of the site is such that any transaction is facilitated extremely easily. There is a strong focus towards online auction management, and the site owners have done just about everything they can think of to speed up payment for online auctions. To make sure you don’t make any mistakes, every transaction is completed via a confirmation screen that literally spells out what will happen when you click confirm.

If you wish to make a payment to somebody, you just need to obtain his or her registered email address. This is a question always worth asking, because the email address that they have used to request payment may not always be the same one they use on Paypal. Once you have the registered address to which you want to send money, you simply click the Send Money tab at the top of the home page and follow the simple steps described. If you make regular payments to the same people, you can speed things up by using the drop down menu of payees, which features anyone with whom you have exchanged funds before. When specifying the payment to be made, you can break the payment down into categories. For instance, you can send £5.00 for Goods and a further £2.50 for postage and packing. This is particularly useful for international bidders who like to know exactly where their money is being spent. You can also leave a message – most users tend to leave the details of the auction lot here.

Perhaps the greatest feature of Paypal is that it sends you an email alert to advise you that you have received (or sent) a payment. This means that you don’t need to keep logging into the site to see if someone has paid. As soon as you receive the email confirming payment, you can ship the goods. This vastly speeds up the transaction, because virtually the whole process is managed via email.

There are two accounts – a standard personal account or a premier account. Most users tend to stick with the standard personal account, as this enables you to send and receive standard cash payments, and this is more than enough. I upgraded to a premier account, because with this one, I was also able to accept payments by credit card, and with such low fees for doing so, I was keen to offer another payment option to bidders.

WITHDRAWING FUNDS

Withdrawing funds is as simple as making a payment. On your account summary page, there is a balance box, which indicates how much is currently in your account in your primary currency. I accept payments from bidders in US dollars, Pounds sterling or Euros, and as such, there are three sub-totals and one overall total. To withdraw funds in £ sterling, you first have to transfer the money from one currency to another. This is performed according to the exchange rate that day and is free of charge. Once you have converted all payments into your native currency, you can then simply arrange for a deposit to be made in your bank account. It’s all very simple, and when you think about the hassle of having to wait for foreign currency payments to arrive in the post and then getting them exchanged, you can see why it is so popular. All transfers and withdrawal transactions are itemised on your activity statement.

Some online reward programmes offer Paypal as a payment method. You can register with loyalty/market research sites in the US for instance, who will gladly make your payment into a Paypal account. This means no more hassle with US cheques or other payments – now you can manage the whole process online. I certainly think that Paypal could be used as a means of making payment to international Ciao members.

FEES

The best part about all this is that there are hardly any fees to pay.

Personal accounts – the only fee you will pay is £1 on each withdrawal you make into your UK bank account. There are no other fees to pay.

Premier Accounts – are charged a small handling fee on payments received from other bidders (20p plus 3.4% of the value of the auction). They also pay £1 to withdraw funds – no other fees are applicable.

SUPPORT AND INFORMATION

The Paypal web site offers the same level of detail in its help guide as that on eBay. The Help Centre is arranged around a list of categories (e.g. Withdrawing Funds) with a list of frequently asked questions below. These questions will nearly always include the information that you want but if they don’t you can also send an email to the support team (or if in the USA, you can also phone). I’ve emailed two questions in the past, and received a response within 24 hours, which was quite acceptable compared to other online help services. You regularly receive emails containing information about new/updated services and there is also a message screen that will appear at login if there is something important you need to be aware of.

In general, the site is very customer focused and is constantly evolving – rather like eBay itself. The most popular use for Paypal is by far with online auctions, and so there are various tools to help your item sell. For example, you can attach HTML to your item description in eBay that contains the Paypal logo, drawing attention to the fact that you accept payment this way. It’s all very slick, very simple and very useful – and for hardly any fees, you really can’t go wrong.

OVERALL VERDICT

My view is that this service will suit everyone. For international buyers, it can mean a faster, more secure way of sending funds and will speed up the time taken to receive the goods. For sellers, it reduces time and prevents the need to exchange foreign currencies, which would normally incur a fee. It’s also an excellent way of tracking things – the activity summary identifies exactly what’s coming in and what’s going out.

Highly recommended
 

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