Alternatives to PayPal

Hi everyone. Does anyone know of any universally accepted alternatives to PayPal. Are there any organisations out there quietly gaining momentum ready to break the eBay/Paypal stranglehold? Or are we going to be stuck with them?

Not if you're selling on eBay; in the last decade eBay has gone out of its way to try to prevent sellers from dealing in anything other than PayPal, using everything from creative licence with facts to outright bullying.

The good news is, eBay has worked so hard to control its sellers that it has really turned into a crap market for most of them, get off eBay and you no longer need to accept PayPal. One of PayPal's big consumer draws "back in the day" was that one could shop safely online without having to enter credit card information. Since even basic 'net users no longer have those sort of reservations, most have no reason to use PayPal when they have a perfectly good debit and credit card in their wallet. Get off eBay and get a merchant account, simple solution.


Frank

Thanks for that Frank. When I wrote the original question I had in mind doing business from a website rather than eBay who are control freaks as far as sellers are concerned.

Alternative question then: How safe is a credit card if one comes across a dodgy merchant. Are there means of redress and what time frames has one got if one doesn't notice early that your credit card had been scammed which happened to me many years ago.

Interested in the merchant account idea. I assume you mean a credit card merchant account from the bank which issued one's card. What safeguards are there in doing this?

Hello cubandane,

You can easily do a chargeback by calling your credit card company if you sense that your business transaction is not going as expected.

I'm not sure, but I think Frank might have meant a 3rd party payment processing company, that will process credit card payments on your behalf.

There are various credit card payment merchant, although I don't have one to recommend to you, sorry...

All the best!