PayPal is one of the largest online payment processors in the world. After rising to prominence through its partnership with Ebay, online merchants all across the Internet accept PayPal as one of their accepted methods of payments.
Those who have never used PayPal may wonder why so many people use it as their only way to pay for online purchases. After you review the following seven advantages to using PayPal to buy online, you will likely want to start using PayPal yourself.
1. Credit card security
When you sign up for a PayPal account, you type in the credit cards and bank accounts you wish to use for purchases one time on the PayPal secure system. Once that is accomplished, you never again have to disclose your credit card information online. By paying with PayPal, you keep your credit card information private, meaning that you can shop without worrying about a hacker downloading your account data from your online merchant.
2. Flexibility
Relieve yourself of the embarrassment and hassle of trying to purchase goods and services online only to have your credit card declined. Because you can set up multiple bank accounts, debit cards, and credit cards to fund your PayPal account, you can rest assured that your PayPal purchases always go through the first time. PayPal will then look for funds from your sources based on the order you define.
3. Send money
Whether you need to send money to a child at college or a friend in trouble across the globe, PayPal users can instantly transfer money to them with just a click of the mouse. Save time and money over costly Western Union style transfers while getting money to where you wish to send it faster than ever.
4. The iPhone App
The PayPal iPhone application makes it easy to shop online and transfer money wherever you are. All you have to do is visit the Apple iTunes store and search for the PayPal app and you will be ready to transfer, send money, pay bills, review your transaction history, and make purchases right from the palm of your hand. Because PayPal will ask you to confirm transactions with a PIN, you can rest assured that your finances are safe should your iPhone be lost or stolen. If you meet someone you need to pay while out on the town, just bump iPhones and make your transfer.
5. Online Auctions
How could anyone talk about PayPal without mentioning eBay? Because PayPal is integrated with the online auction powerhouse, you can place bids and make purchases safely. Buyer protection and a structured complaint resolution process means that eBay bidders have more protection than most credit card holders when it comes to one of the most popular online shopping sites.
6. Cost
One of the best reasons for using PayPal is its cost: free. That’s right. No annual membership fees, no processing fees, no service charges. Shoppers using PayPal get all the powerful advantages associated with the service and do not have to pay one dime.
7. Discounts
PayPal sponsors special discounts for customers that shop with PayPal at selected retailers. Users who visit shopping.paypal.com can find the latest special offers from companies like HP, Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, Nike, and more. The bottom line is that PayPal can save you money on the things you need at the places where you shop. To take advantage of the savings all you have to do is copy the special promo code from the PayPal shopping Web page and paste it into your order at your merchant’s site when you pay with PayPal.
These seven advantages to using PayPal to buy online are enough to make you want to give PayPal a try. If you have never opened a PayPal account, go ahead and create one today. If you have only used PayPal at eBay, the time is now to see the whole world of opportunity that PayPal opens up for you.
@Erma, There is usually a guest checkout option once you go to the PayPal checkout page. You can do the checkout using a standard credit card (no need to signup for an account).
I wish to purchase something from a company that only gives PayPal as an option. I don’t want to transfer money from one account to another and I don’t want to deal outside of the US. I am not comfortable opening a PayPal account as I have heard some horror stories about them. I don’t want to pay money every month weather I use it or not. I just want to buy something I saw online.
I love PayPal and have used it over many years and for countless financial transactions and purchases without any problems. I love the way PayPal guarantees your purchases against fraudulent activity and is prepared to investigate suspicious misuse of your PayPal account if required. PayPal gives the user a feeling of security because they do not have to disclose highly confidential credit card numbers which, in my own experience, has been compromised in the past. The only worry is if PayPal itself (and its highly confidential records of credit card numbers etc) is compromised but I am very confident PayPal would meet its commitment to cover any damages or costs to the user in such a case.
Jakob makes some good points. But I have lived overseas and I can tell you PayPal came in handy. I needed to transfer money from Malaysia to a private party/friend in Indonesia. A credit card was not an option. Western Union is not free or convenient, but paypal is.
I still don’t get it, Paypal feels more like an unnecessary middle-hand. Their strong ties with Ebay surely has its strength since they’ve had a long commitment together by now. But all other things mentioned here is something that Paypal is not needed for. To get hacked online, and your card info stolen is very rare compared to amount of people who directly use their bank card for online purchases. Also, you will be reimbursed from your bank if that happens since you most likely can prove that those purchases drastically deviate from your typical way of shopping.
At the time when Paypal emberged it was understandble that they found their place, because online was fairly new then, and people very unsecure of its safety. But today… they have played out their role.
And about getting direct transfers from friends or private business deals… Paypal is not connected to any ATMs – you can only use money on their accounts online. If you want to turn that money into cash, just as you can from any standard bank account, you need to make a withdrawal from Paypal to your bank account, which is not a direct transfer.
Where I live, it takes one workingday to transfer from any bank account to an account in a other bank within this nation, and if the accounts are held by the same bank, it’s wired instantly.
Only proper reason you could use Paypal is if you, for any reason, do not want your bank to know from which stores,or salesmen you are buying from. That info will instead be registered at Paypal, and not your bank.
If you do not care about that – Paypal is merely an unnecessary middle-man.
@Timothy, You can think of it as an online wallet I guess. The good thing with PayPal is that, you can use it to pay on almost all major online shopping sites. If you remove your bank account details from PayPal then it won’t pull money from there. However, you won’t be able to pay for things if you don’t have enough funds in your PayPal account.
Hi I’ve never used anything like paypal before so I’ve been wondering is it kind of like a online wallet like what amazon has where you can load only a certain amount of money on it and it won’t go over that amount or will it keep taking money from my bank account if I forget to reload it also if I do use a bank account to load money on it can I remove the account number so it won’t be able to take more money out of it
My daughter uses Paypal for her Deviant ART account which is where she draws pictures and if someone asks her to draw them one, they send the money to her paypal account, but whats horrible is this.. She always isso good about making sure the customer is happy and she even emails them asking if they are, and once she gets a reply yes, then she sends out the picture she drew, but now customers who use this can say yes, receive the digital artwork, use it on their page and then turn around and ask for a chargeback after my daughter went above and beyond doing a good job for them, now here’s the part that really pisses me off. My daughter has a learning disability and it takes her way longer to sketch a professional drawing than usual artists and these scum buckets have now changed the 45 day rule to 180 days, so now my daughter wont transfer any of the money sitting in her PayPal due to being scared someone will come back and say they are not happy ect, after the fact, and also there is no way for the seller of (ART) to retrieve their artwork due to its digital work, which is bullshit. This is way to long 180 days, maybe for out of the country, but this is over the internet, and all within the United States. PayPal has made it to easy for buyers to rip off sellers and this is not right, My daughter and others work to hard and long to draw, sketch, design a new character for them and they still use it, this is total B.S, Its like saying ok its legal because Paypal has made it so easy to rip off sellers of original artwork (drawings) My daughter is very upset, as this is her only source of income and when it brings her to tears, I get involved. PayPal you had better change your policy to protect both sides of the cake!!!! Any digital artwork being performed within the United States should stay at the 45 day mark, 180 is 6 months, get **** real!!! After 6 months they could of already used it, which is likely, more than not , even put their own name on it, which is likely more than not!! Are you going to make sure that seller returns the digital copy, and sign an agreement on their end to protect my daughters artwork from being stolen?
Pissed off protective mother
of artist with disability
Very important the buyer complaint be notified to PayPal within 45 days of purchase. Beyond which consumers get no refund for any non-delivery of products.
Online stores and online shopping are the next big thing in the retail industry. With the advent of internet and computer literacy, people have now understood that you can shop without running around stores. The growth has seen the emergence of websites that sell products ranging from cosmetics to gadgets to dress to books to what not. If you want it, it’s there on the internet. Even you can buy groceries online these days. And this is a reality. People now prefer to shop for groceries online for some simple reason – 24X7 open store, cash-on-delivery, 7000 products to choose from and lots more.
I love PayPal, but I have never used the app. I just wish Google could integrate PayPal with Adsense, it would make things so much easier in my case.
Nice tips, I will share this one.
Paysafecard sound like a good deal, but it is not yet available for use for us in South Africa.
James, have you tried it already? What do you think? 🙂
I was pretty amazed how simple and good PSC is 🙂
I have been using PayPal for years. Yes, there are somethings I like and love about them and others things that I don’t like — but they can be given a lot of credit for making it easy to sell online — even if it is a little pricey.
I am going to go check out PaySafeCard.
Hi Paul,
It can be used with any currency you need I think… GBP, Dollars, Euros… Probably depends on where you’re at, and I use it with Euro right now, but you can switch between currencies if you need to.
Hey Frank,
Why don’t you try using the Paysafecard then? It’s like an online cash card. You get money, they get products, everybody happy. 😉
Hi Jake,
thank you very much for your answer!
Now I absolutely want to try it, especially now where I can get a free portal!
What currency does it use?
I’m not sure I totally agree with all that was said here. It seems that paypal is giving the customer the whole service ride and the retailer gets the screw. I find that all the time, people will purchase things through paypal and then a couple days later do a chargeback. It cannot be the quality of the products as I’ve sold many in the past with no issues and then in the past couple of months, people will chargeback after a month or so – just long enough to forget what they picked up, and being an online retailer, I have NO defence. You see, if I don’t send out a hard product, paypal considers that the transaction is not be completed and will gladly give back their money. So, I”m on the hunt for a new online vendor who will actually hear both sides of the conversation instead of just charging me and then taking back with no power to my account.
Hey Paul,
Yes, Steam is a games portal. You can download their client and add the games you already play, even if they don’t have it in their database. Other than that, you can buy games from there, and have a free copy of it even if you switch to another PC or OS. I like them because of that. It’s awesome that now you can make purchases wit PSC there too! I like to see good products making their way up on the market.
I hope that helps. TC
Besides the other benefits, #6 Cost is clearly the single most propelling factor for PayPal’s wide adoption in my opinion with 0 setup, monthly fees. Though the transaction fee isn’t the greatest, and would render some low margin business not to be able to go online, it’s highly attractive especially for smaller SMEs venturing to try ecommerce. Besides that, it’s really easy to integrate and is very well documented.
I’ve read that now also Steam supports it, and I’ve read that it’s a games portal. Does anybody know how it functions?
I had a Paypal account, which I used for my online games’ payments but hated that some transactions take more than 3 days. If it was a salary and a real bank, I could understand that but there were just a couple of pounds I wanted to transfer into ‘virtual money’. I’m so glad there is an alternative payment way like paysafecard. I wish they were supported by more services!
Yes it’s a really great thing that you can buy them in a lot of places in whole Europe and not only. I love it to use them for Skype and Facebook and so on, but for me it’s easier buying the prepaid voucher in web… and safer because for buying them in the www you need to use your credit card. And I hate that, and that’s because I use the PSC!
Hey again,
cool, thanks!
I prefer buying them offline since the whole point about getting prepaid cards is to pay online with them without having to transfer my details, but as long as there are outlets in my area it sounds great.
Will have a look at the page 🙂
@Menky
One of the best things about the paysafecard is that there are NO FEES at all! I was surprised as you might be now. And yes, you can get it in many stores across the Europe, gas stations, tobacco shops, PayPoint outlets…. or even online if you don’t feel like going out… considering the heat xD
The best solution is to check on their official web page. Just enter your address and they will find the nearest shops around you 🙂
Hope this helps…. You’ll see, it’s a great idea
I suspended my paypal account a few weeks ago since I find the fees they ask you to pay are simply horrendous and seem to go up all the time as well. I also hated that you HAD TO use paypal when you wanted to sell something on ebay as a rather new user.
Paypal might have been a good payment solution in the past but it is no longer.
@Jake:
Can you get paysafcard in Europe, too?
And how much do they ask for fees?
I stopped using my paypal account as I found even safer method. Now I’m using Paysafecard.
It’s a prepaid card and one doesn’t have to give away any personal or bank account info to anyone, just enter those codes provided with the card. I also like all control I have over my money. I can’t spend more than I have already planned to…. for my type of shopaholic personality it’s a perfect solution. 🙂
I just wanted to share this as I was really amazed when I heard about it from a friend .
TC
There is no doubt that PayPayl is one of the best online payment gatway. But recently I (and almost every Indian) facing few issues regarding the payment since last 5-6 months due to restriction on payment in India. Last time on28th of July 2010 PayPal pause electronic payment to India and chaps are only allowed to withdraw the fund through Cheque and I did the same as on 29th of July. However PayPal announced again on 31st of July that they have got green signal from Indian Gov to start online transfer but my bad luck, till then I had already requested for the cheque and now after 15+ days cheque is not yet received. Talked to PayPal customer support and they said it could take up to 4-5 weeks 🙁
Here are some more advantages of using PayPal:
– Immediate and convenient.
– No requirement that you use your credit card (you can transfer money directly from your bank account).
– Sellers don’t see your credit card number (it is safely encrypted through PayPal’s server), which limits the risk of unauthorized use.
PayPal is really great. I like it most because it is international and everybody is using it so you can pay to and receive from everyone. And you can get money in your visa electron credit card.
No payment gateway is perfect so PayPal has it’s flaws too but PayPal definitely makes sending and receiving money heaps easier.
I think PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online. The service allows members to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing.