Shopping Online With PayPal
What is the value of using PayPal?
PayPal is a great secure way to shop online. It is owned by eBay and lets you shop knowing your details are safe and secure.
How PayPal works is to act as an intermediary between you and the shop (or eBay seller). You set up a PayPal account with money in it from your credit card or bank account and use it to pay the shops for your goodies.
I use PayPal for my shopping cart facility on the website. I chose it because it is safe, easy to use and affordable. Although I can already accept credit card payment at market and via mail order I would have to spend about $1000+ on services and secure gateways to set up online credit card payments (plus pay extra transaction fees). I’d already been using PayPal for my eBay listings and found it met all my needs so I thought I’d start there.
One of the extra benefits with PayPal is that I can use a variety of currencies as it supports Australian dollars, US and Canadian dollars, UK pounds, Yen and Euro. This makes it easier for my international customers to shop with me as PayPal does the currency exchange.
The exchange rates used by PayPal are now fair and reflect the market rates (of course there is a margin but it is the same as the local banks and cheaper than the currency exchange booths at the airport) since eBay bought them out.
PayPal takes the much of the risk out of shopping online because they are a reputable intermediary – the middle player between the online shop and the shopper.
Part of the way they do this is by having a rating system. If you look at me you’ll see I have a Verified rate of over 150 and that shows you I’ve had over 150 happy and successful transactions (that I haven’t been bad with any trades).
Just like eBay, PayPal uses the Community reputation system to monitor participants – to show through past actions who is a reputable seller and who has troubles.
This lets you make an informed decision about the seller, it lets you know more about them so you’re not left out there wondering what they are like.
I use my PayPal account for both receiving payments as well as for shopping and have had no problems with it over the last 2 years. I happily recommend having a PayPal account (and of course shopping with me with it!!).
To help learn more and understand how PayPal works I’ve created an area online for you. So come and visit!