About PayPal

最近出于跨国交易的需要，希望能够了解各种省时省力的收付款方式，所以自然而然地注意到了PayPal。

不过似乎关于PayPal的负面评论有很多，便利之外也有不少交易安全的隐患。下面是一些网友的tips，相信以后会用得着。

1. Don’t use PayPal.

2. Take the extra step and use a real merchant account and payment gateway. We use Landmark Merchant Services in conjunction with Freshbooks and have been happy as a clam ever since. Literally took about two hours to complete the application, have it approved, and be up, running, and accepting CC payments. Even better, our clients love it and the added cost is negligible to the time it saves us. Oh yah, payments are automatically deposited into your account.

3. If you use PayPal and you get a chargeback *from a reliable client*, DON’T DISPUTE IT. Simply call your client and ask for payment by check instead. When we did this, everything worked out fine, But in one instance, after we disputed the charge and the client repaid the invoice by CC through PayPal, PayPal charged the client a second time — even after we informed PayPal that the issue was resolved. So four months later we had to write a check back to the client.

I realize that using PayPal is easy and for someone just starting out it’s definitely a viable option. But if you’re serious about running a business, you need to take the necessary steps to run it as a real business and leave PayPal to the Mom and Pop’s selling cookies on eBay.

还有一些alternatives的方式：

Moneybookers.com (http://www.moneybookers.com)
This is very secure. The only downside is it’s limit, currently my limit is a flat zero, and have to wait for couple months to get my limit back. Other than that, all works good. It also accept recurrent payment.

2checkout (http://www.2checkout.com)
2CO is very slow, but they do their job well. The fee is a bit higher than paypal. If you do lots of micro payment of tangible or non-tangible products, 2CO is a great choice.

Google Checkout might be good, but it’s only for US and UK bank accounts at the moment. No idea what their policy is though.