PayPal is just poison for your business. They do stuff like this with such regularity that it's nearly impossible to run a business on their payment system.
Any minor change you make exposes you to their review process, which often means they'll simply shut down your account while you jump through their hoops. In the meantime you can't pay your bills or collect payments or otherwise use your account the way you've been using it for years.
They're coming out with some truly interesting services that I would love to use, but frankly I can't afford to expose my business to the risk associated with their review process.
Didn't they have to refund the money because they haven't shipped the product yet and Paypal has a time limit on transactions like that... I don't really think its Paypal's fault that they took payment for something 9+ months ago and the members still haven't received it.
I'm a bit user of Paypal, it allows me to sell easily to almost anyone in the world, I'd argue that Paypal makes it easy for anyone to get started with a webapp be it for payments, donations, subscriptions.
Sure they have there issues but I've always being able to get them on the phone and sort it out.
Indeed, they help you get off the ground in a hurry.
The big issue I have with PayPal is that they don't let you set up a new account for a new bank account. They tie everything you do to a single SSN or tax ID, so there is no way to separate one product from another.
As a result, if you put a new product live, they'll review it when it bills its first credit card. And often that means they'll freeze your account, thus killing all your businesses dead until you resolve it. Worse, if they decide to shut down your account, it's permanent. For you. As in, you as a human being can never set up another PayPal account. As in, you quickly need to reimplement payment for every one of your products. And figure out a new way to pay your overseas suppliers.
It's just not worth the risk.
It's a shame too, since they do make some cool stuff. If they let me set up a new account to try it out, I'd definitely do so.
What do you use? Are there any other good gateways? I haven't been able to find anything that doesn't require a huge setup fee (for my volume of business).
Amazon is great for getting the same sort of hosted checkout experience up and running with zero hassle. They don't mind you setting up as many accounts as makes sense for your business, even if more than one of them point to the same bank account.
For a proper merchant/gateway experience, I'm with Braintree now, and they are everything you'd want. Granted, you need a real business bank account behind it, and they'll charge you about $100/month as a baseline. But their API just plain makes sense, comes with all the bells and whistles if you need them, and drops right in to your app without a single fist-shaped dent in your keyboard.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 26.8 ms ] threadAny minor change you make exposes you to their review process, which often means they'll simply shut down your account while you jump through their hoops. In the meantime you can't pay your bills or collect payments or otherwise use your account the way you've been using it for years.
They're coming out with some truly interesting services that I would love to use, but frankly I can't afford to expose my business to the risk associated with their review process.
I'm a bit user of Paypal, it allows me to sell easily to almost anyone in the world, I'd argue that Paypal makes it easy for anyone to get started with a webapp be it for payments, donations, subscriptions.
Sure they have there issues but I've always being able to get them on the phone and sort it out.
The big issue I have with PayPal is that they don't let you set up a new account for a new bank account. They tie everything you do to a single SSN or tax ID, so there is no way to separate one product from another.
As a result, if you put a new product live, they'll review it when it bills its first credit card. And often that means they'll freeze your account, thus killing all your businesses dead until you resolve it. Worse, if they decide to shut down your account, it's permanent. For you. As in, you as a human being can never set up another PayPal account. As in, you quickly need to reimplement payment for every one of your products. And figure out a new way to pay your overseas suppliers.
It's just not worth the risk.
It's a shame too, since they do make some cool stuff. If they let me set up a new account to try it out, I'd definitely do so.
For a proper merchant/gateway experience, I'm with Braintree now, and they are everything you'd want. Granted, you need a real business bank account behind it, and they'll charge you about $100/month as a baseline. But their API just plain makes sense, comes with all the bells and whistles if you need them, and drops right in to your app without a single fist-shaped dent in your keyboard.
EDIT: It seems that it's only available in the US, back to PayPal I go, I guess :/