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Hiya,

Hopefully should garner a very quick answer this one 😉

I was just wondering if my thoughts are correct in that if you use PayPal (Simple Payments) for people to pay for something then you don’t need a Merchant Bank Account as PayPal acts as both the Service Provider and the Merchant Account.

Pretty sure that all you need is PayPal and then you can just have a normal Business bank account and transfer funds from PayPal to the bank account can’t you?

I only ask as I am going to be converting a site that has a Merchant account attached to the bank account to use PayPal instead of what it is doing at the moment and I’m pretty sure that the client can save money by not having a merchant account as they won’t need one if using PayPal as it will act as the merchant?

Am I right in my thinking?

Thanks for any pointers on this one.

Best wishes,

Mark

I would say Paypal is all you need, I have 2 merchant accounts (worldpay/authorizenet) and I am going to tank them both for the pro account at paypal.  You of course don’t need the paypal pro account but it’s nice for the lower percentage.  The only draw back is that people get taken away, have to login to paypal and then get taken back to the site.  At first this really bugged me but I got so quick at paying for things in paypal it was a no brainier.  The thing I see is there are visitors that at not so good at knowing what paypal is all about, it depends on your audience but at the end of the day you will be happier and wealthier.

Hiya,

Yep that’s what I thought. It was just that we had a PCI DSS compliance note come through and I was pretty sure that to get around it all using PayPal would be the answer as they (PayPal) are PCI compliant and as none of the payment side of things is being done on the actual site rather it is done on PayPal’s site then they deal with the PCI and merchant part.

You also have to get a web-connection scan through an ASV if you are logging in anywhere that might show you the credit card numbers which is what was happening on the existing site so this is definitely going to be an all round better solution. They’ve been paying nearly £40 a month for a while now with no sales so this is pretty much a no-brainer 😉

Thanks for the thoughts on that though.

Best wishes,

Mark

Sure thing! This was a good confirmation that I need to move onto paypal for my site too.  It seems the compliance is pretty tight with some card processors, Worldpay made me jump through lots of hoops to get their service and then they basically did a “set it and forget it”, unless someone complains to the processor.  I don’t like that seeing CC #‘s and being responsible for keeping things locked down, to much can go wrong.  We do CC processing for clients that advertise on our site and we still get the client who will send their CC# and all info through the email, oh that’s like nails on a chalk board.

By the way it’s off subject but I had a look at your shopping cart module, very nice and useful.

Hey Mark,

Take a look at this as a good explanation of Paypal services. This may help you get your head around things. Zen cart has some other useful Paypal info as well.

http://tutorials.zen-cart.com/index.php?article=28

Hope it helps.

Hi Mark,

I had the opposite experience. At bionicturtle.com, I first accepted payment only via SCM & PayPal Pro; this was not generally a problem with North American sales. But it was a huge problem in many non-US countries. I added a Merchant (BofA via cybersource) gateway and both is what I needed. I grappled with PayPal a lot; it’s got pros/cons. I am not totally current, but as of a few months ago, there were distinct differences btwn paypal & my BofA merchant. The obvious issue is coverage: there will be listed countries versus non-listed countries (my BofA has better coverage. Period). But there are more nuanced issues; e.g., the paypal (in my experience) as-merchant runs a pretty tight credit algorithm (this confirmed by convos with my rep) even in some accepted countries, so they would deny customer I’d have preferred to accept. Also, some customers do really not trust paypal, for whatever reason. My bottom line is, I did not experience the “ability to take credit cards” as totally fungible, I’d be careful about detaching the merchant before confirming you will have the international reach, to the extent it’s an issue. We have more non-US sales than US, and therefore, paypal only is absolutely unworkable for us. Shawn Maida brilliantly incorporated both (paypal & merchant) for us, and that’s ideal for us…David