What are the best alternatives for paypal?

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I almost had to give up the idea of online selling when I found out that paypal does not support my country.

If you cannot process a credit card payment online just forget the idea of selling online.True,You can always use your own credit card merchant if you can bear the extra cost and go through the months long verification process.

So the easy way out is to go with paypal.Almost everyone now days have paypal. Don’t they? But the problem is they offer a shitty deal to some countries. Paypal say they support 190 countries. But I don’t know how they define support,Because I can’t receive any money but I can send money anywhere I want. What kind of a support is that ?

Well,Thanks to few other great online processing companies emerged last few years, now we can finally say ,bugger off PAYPAL. We don’t need ya. Boy’I am so happy after typing that.
Today I received a check from Alert Pay. Well,Actually 2 since I made two withdrawal requests the same day.

The point is, I am so happy to the fact that I am using 3 great alternatives to paypal at the moment and Have been able to both accept credit card payments and successfully withdraw them. I was waiting for my alertpay checks to arrive to write this post So I can declare without any doubts that all 3 alternatives have been tried Tested and have been successful.

Without further a due let me Introduce the first paypal alternative I am using.

Moneybookers.

Registered in England and Wales under Company No 4260907 moneybookers is my favorite online payment processor without any competition. It might not have the same user base as paypal does.

But none of my buyers whom I referred to moneybookers to do their payments , have never refused to go through the payment process. The complete professional nature of moneybookers might have played a major part of it. I recently withdrew Rs 100,000 from moneybookers account and they only took 5 days to complete the whole transaction.

And here is the best part. They charged only € 1.80 and all I had to do was just fill in the withdraw form and after 5 days walk to my nearest ATM. I am happy with the great support team also. They were quick, professional and never had a problem that they couldn’t deal with.

My post would not be completed If I only write the good parts and neglect the cons. The biggest problem with moneybookers is that they do not allow the buyers to send money without verifying them.

So If a customer clicks the payment button from my website hoping that they can complete the payment in the next page, They are wrong. In order for them to send a payment to me, they should open a free moneybookers account and their credit card should be verified.

This is not a problem if the customer is already a moneybookers user. Then there is no need for a new verification process. But if they are new to the system moneybookers will charge a random amount from their credit card (A very small amount.) and the customer has to enter the exact amount in order to be verified.

For them to know the exact amount , they either have to wait till next credit card statement, or they have to call the bank and ask.Which I consider bit inconvenient. And which also led me to the discovery of my next best alternative for paypal, ALERTPAY.

AlertPay

Some people are afraid to use alertpay since most of the scam networks use alertpay as their payment method. For example most hyips,network marketing scams use them.But I hope, you all are intelligent enough to understand that we cannot label a processor as scam If the users of the system involve in scam businesses.

I do run 3 honest businesses using alertpay and never had a major problem with them.

Click here to see a check I received today from AlertPay.Their Credit card processing is excellent and very quick. And most importantly very convenient for the customer. They allow my customers to send me the payment before opening a free alertpay account or having them to complete the verification process.

But after they complete the payment, they will be redirected to a page where they have to open a free account.And I do not think that would be a problem for the seller since they will not have anyone abandoning the process and as a result loosing a sale.

Lets go to the cons part. AlertPay is almost perfect if not for their lousy customer support department.They take ages for respond to something. But I got to know that they are hiring more and more people to the support team So I hope this situation will change in the near future. And if they are to become No1 they should look in to this customer support matter immediately. I highly recommend them If you are to start an online business.

And the final paypal alternative I use is 2Checkout.

2Checkout

The site has about 50,000 active vendors and signs up 1,500 new clients every month. And they are very professional too. I use 2checkout only with my web hosting business at the moment ,But I am planning to use more and more of 2co in the future.

The only disadvantage of using 2co is the high cost when comparing with alertpay and monebookers. They have a set up fee of $49.00 and takes a 5.5% commission plus $0.45 for each sale. And there is a 5% rolling reserve for 90 days.

Great thing about 2co is they offer a the 2CO re loadable MasterCard.You can simply load the 2co balance to your master card and use it to purchase goods or withdraw from the nearest ATM machine. If you can bear the small extra cost 2co would be the best paypal alternative for you.

In this post I have listed the best paypal alternatives I am using. There may be few other,But I have first hand experience only with these companies. You can always share your experience in the comments field and introduce the programs you are using.

There is no competition yet to paypal when we take the number of users. They are part of the world’s biggest marketplace "ebay" and ebay users are literally forced to use paypal. The fact that paypal have the largest member base would make them the best payment processor? It is up for discussion.

I have seen lot of scary stories about paypal in number of online forums. Sellers have experienced nightmares with frozen funds in paypal and paypal chargebacks. Feel free to post your comments here. As for the paypal alternatives they all have their pros and cons. But without paypal am I losing sales? I don’t think so. I am doing more then great with my alternative processors.

So for people who are from countries which paypal do not offer the receiving option, And people who get kicked out of paypal for any weird reason, or for people who just hate paypal for their monopoly, The world does not end there. Make sure you use of the available opportunities you have. Start your online business adventure. Good Luck.

——-Update- 19/Aug/2008——-
So far I have deposited 4 more checks from Alertpay. All were cleared without any problems. In my country it takes 21 days to clear the check and there is no extra bank fee. I have launched 2 more web sites after writing this post and those 2 sites offer alertpay and moneybookers as the payment option. I am more than happy with AlertPay and moneybookers so far.

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