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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[...] Credit wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt 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 [...]
yeah..this is so true, well actually i had problems with these buggers(paypla) acually i wasnt a seller in fact they charged me for a failed transaction, n i have used 2co and they are really good. ny ways interesting post keep it up.
Great post, Just what I have been looking for. Later do include details of how cashing the Alertpay cheque turned out?
I was looking for something like this.Just opened an account at moneybookers.Thanks a lot for the share.
Be aware of 2CO if a fraudulent transaction occurs and there is a charge back 2CO puts a hold on your funds and you will not be able to withdraw funds. The account gets shutdown with funds and all. There really is no proper alternative to Paypal if you ask me. I have been involved in online retail since 1999 and have found it hard to find a good payment processor that’s on par with paypal. The most succesful businesses online have all used their own merchants, if your raking in $1000 a month and your margin of profit is over 70% its worth investing in a proper local CC processor through your bank. Get a terminal, set it up at your location and have your website encrypt and store customer’s CC info, do a manual charge on the terminal.
@ hilal,
Not only 2co, every other merchant in universe will act bit crazy on chargebacks. I don’t why you missed this. Do a google search on paypal charge backs and see. I don’t know hoe come you are not aware of it given the fact that you are in retailing since 1999.
And there is a way to handle chargebacks. Even on 2co. Thats a different topic to discuss. Even if you have your own merchant when it comes to charge backs the story is same :-)
Batta,
Paypal and 2CO handle chargebacks very differently on Paypal you can continue to do daily transactions and make withdrawals whilst the chargeback is investigated. 2CO SHUTS DOWN YOUR ACCOUNT with no explanation or refund of your cash from legit transactions.
Itz true. All the merchants act in a less friendly way when it comes to charge backs. In my opinion paypal is the worst when it comes to handling this. Literally with paypal there is no say for the seller. So I disregard Hilal’s comment. It is misleading.
@hilal,
This says otherwise,
http://www.paypalwarning.com/paypal_chargeback_nightmare
[...] ) you are left with very few choices , well thats what I thought until I read this great post , What are the alternatives for PayPal, other than that there are some more great posts and I highly recommend adding that blog to your [...]
paypal is s**k.. :p
my account is limited,,
but the support didnt give help..
[...] If you don’t have paypal the world does not end there. [...]
dear friends. once i opened account at alert pay. but i didn’t give my full name there. will be it problem when i am trying to encash the cheque i received from alert pay? is there any way to change my account name there in alert pay
@ indika
Yes, there will be a problem as the cheque payee name will be put as the account name. And there will be problems when they want to verify your account with identity and address. So the best thing is to contact Alert pay and change your name. First go to “edit profile” section and see you can do it your self. Otherwise send them a support ticket.
yeah..this is so true, well actually i had problems with these buggers(paypla) acually i wasnt a seller in fact they charged me for a failed transaction, n i have used 2co and they are really good. ny ways interesting post keep it up.
Great post. Thanks. Does MB and Alertpay have a limit on the withdrawals? There are several websites which make over $100,000 a month. So is it possible to withdraw such large amounts?
It’s not the PayPal-killer that everyone was hoping it might be, but Google has launched a payment system — known as Google Checkout — that could still wind up disrupting the existing online payment game, if only because the search engine has the cash hoard to finance a prolonged battle for market share with advertisers.
@ Suren,
Sorry for the late reply. Yes they both have limits but with proper verification you can lift most of the limits.
@ paypal bingo,
Still the ” google check out” money receiving option is not available world wide. There has not been enough growth in that network. I had big hopes about them and hope Google will deliver.
Hi. Bad and sad ! AlertPay has a creditcard outage for more than a month. It kills. Most of my clients pay by creditcards. Is MB as easy as alertpay ? Or will it give my clients another headache ? Please advise. Thanks in advance.
@ Yasas,
Yes. I got to know about the incident. Seems like mastercard and Visa don’t want their business anymore. But I saw in the alertpay forum that they have successfully negotiated a contract with a bank. We can only wait and see.
MB is not easy to use as AP. It is difficult to use them as a credit card processor unfortunately.
Thanks. Clients pay us via bank transfer using alertpay. It is not convenient at all. So AP is off. MB is not easy to use. 2Co prohibits our biz, providing tutorial services to students abroad. So what is the solution for me ? Sakvithi’s can fly out of SL like kings. Foreign exchange earners are treated as dogs here. A site developer asks USD 799 to implement PayPal or Google Checkout for us in Srilanka. What is the solution for me, than waiting for AP and losing students? AP even has NO GUARANTEE on CC’s
Apart from PP, i really love moneybookers, Xoom is also one of the services to be worth considering.
Does Xoom still support Srilanka ? I read in a site that Xoom had recently discontinued its operations for Srilanka. If that works, then, we can open a PP a/c with country as india and receive payments to pp. Then, transfer pp payments to our xoom a/c and request a withdrawal from xoom. But as your pp a/c will not have been verified, you’ll have a sending limit of $500 in pp. How this sounds ?? Some people do like this, open a pp a/c as indian. Then, pp->get a freelancer->moneybookers. How ? Pls share !
@ yasas,
Why you cannot use moneybookers? Using xoom will not do any good for your business. If you are talking about good money, then use your own credit card processor. That is not too hard if you have a legitimate business. Sampath bank and Seylan bank have good payment gateway systems.
But, do you know sampath bank requires USD 500+ AND our business MUST be already an ESTABLISHED one, like Odel etc. Seylan on the other hand, requires approx Rs 1mil as initial deposit. My biz is a legit one. Selling online educational material. But, merely LEGIT is NOT enough for our local banks. We should be an established biz to have payment gateway. Between, as you are running three LEGIT biz, then, why you also use MB, AlertPay and 2CO ?? Please advise if I am wrong. Thanx.
Hi,
I have my own sampathnet gateaway for my T-shirt business. I wrote this article on 12th July 2008 and lot of things have changed since then. I also have a working Google check out account which I got with the use of one of my friend, When your business is evolving you got to improve too.
I got to know that Alertpay is starting CC operation later this week. Checkout their blog.
So for people like us, yet to establish in a new venture, I guess AlertPay is more convenient. Am I correct ? Otherwise, local bank managers issaraha dhana gahanna wei ! Isn’t it ?
By the way, if we had friends in foreign countries where PayPal or G Checkout is working, can we open accounts ? How can we proof our bank account for verification ? If you could provide this info, it would be an invaluable help, not only for me, but also for many who share their thought here ! Thanks in Advance !
Thats a important information for man who her bank accpunt not support paypal..
awesome article mate, i just have paypal until now, will try to open moneybooker or alertpay later
I think xoom is a great alternative. Been using Xoom to pay one of my freelancer and she received it on the day itself.
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