"PayPal Alternatives"

After becoming another victim of PayPal and creating this website, I decided to spend a few hours of my time trying to find the best alternatives to PayPal. What I found is very interesting.

There are all kinds of alternatives to PayPal, most of which are 3rd party payment processors.

These 3rd party processors allow you to process your credit card transactions through their merchant account, rather than you acquiring a merchant account on your own.

Although these processing companies seem safer for the seller than PayPal, they often require several account restrictions such as a 2-4 week hold on your money, not offering direct deposit into your bank account, limiting your monthly transaction volume to 1 or 2 thousand dollars, requiring a rolling reserve, all while charging 2-3 times the transaction fees that PayPal does.

So, I began researching Merchant Account Providers to see how some of them stacked up to PayPal.

One of the reasons PayPal became so successful was that it cost nothing upfront, while years ago, many Merchant Account Providers were charging over $1,000.00 upfront, just to have access to a real merchant account for internet transactions.

However, as competition in the merchant account industry grew, the costs of acquiring a real merchant account decreased dramatically.

In fact, although many merchant account providers still charge upfront fees to get set up with a secured payment gateway and a secured shopping cart system, there are some that actually charge nothing upfront and set you up with a free shopping cart as well.

It seems the only thing that has remained the same is that with a Real Merchant Account, the transaction fees are usually lower than PayPal and they direct deposit the funds into your personal or business bank account, rather than a PayPal Account, which gives you control over your own money.

The best deal I was able to find was with a company called Free-Merchant.com.

They offer a Free Shopping Cart, Free Setup with a Secured Payment Gateway, no upfront costs at all, Free check acceptance and free Amex setup.

I highly recommend them as one of the best alternatives to PayPal.