PayPal

Employed & Self Employed
1

Hooray,

I’ve just taken my first booking for my own company (rather than working freelance) now the clients have to pay me. Does anyone have experience of using PayPal to take payments, is is cheap, expensive, value for money - does it give your customers confidence, especially when taking overseas bookings?

I’ve had a look at the site but would like to hear a users point of view, also I’m anticipating the majority of my customers to be non-euro clients so is it best to sign up in the UK or France, I have an old UK account somewhere still.

Thanks for anyone that can help.

2

Hi Tracy, if cash is practical I would be inclined to go with cash also. In my opinion Realex is cheap though, in fact I looked at their site in French and they are offering the service for 20 Euro per month here. I am actually going to integrate a site I am building at the moment with their service, I can let you know how it goes if you like. One thing I forgot to mention about it though, is that you need a merchant account with your bank to use it.

3

Interesting, just had a chat with a fellow guide (French) and he told me not to use PayPal or anything similar as it is all expensive. He advises ‘cash only’ and not just because it is cheap, more flexibility is how he put it!!!

4

Thanks for that, it is rather expensive isn’t it - 43.86 euros on a sale 1290€!
I am trying to think of it from a user point of view but if there is currency charges on top that - phew!

5

Oh, and congrats on your first booking :slight_smile:

6

Hi Tracy,

Paypal is one of the easiest ways to start selling online. I have integrated sites with paypal in the past, and found it very straight forward. They have no monthly fee, so that is another advantage if you are just starting off and don’t know how much business you will do.

On the negative side, it is much more expensive than other solutions. They charge 30 cent + a percentage per transaction.

If you will be selling a lot online, you could look at Realex. It is 30 Euro per month, and that includes 350 transactions. 12 cent per transaction after that.

http://www.realexpayments.com/

From a users point of view, I think most people are comfortable paying with Paypal.