accepting payments: paypal vs. amazon pay vs. ??

It just now came to my attention that when 100 people try to buy stuff on the digital market, less than 10% actually finish the transaction.  I thought it did something where people were given the option to buy stuff with a credit card or to log in to paypal and use their paypal balance.  But it appears that they only get the option of logging in to paypal or creating a paypal account.  

So now I am thinking it might be wise to insert a page there and give people some options.  

Is there a credit card processing service where they don't have to log in and I don't see anybody's credit card info?

Also, amazon pay is a new thing that smells a lot like paypal - maybe that would be a good option.

I like the idea of accepting bitcoin and other coin, but i would need it be quick.  Anybody know what the options are?

paul wheaton wrote:
I like the idea of accepting bitcoin and other coin, but i would need it be quick.  Anybody know what the options are?

There are a lot of options for accepting crypto-currencies, but as far as I know they are all kits that your developers would need to integrate. Which one would be best depends on several things including what software your website is developed with and what your acceptance preferences are.

BitPay has been around forever. I used them years ago and they worked almost perfectly for me until they asked for stuff like my business tax ID. They allow you to specify how much (by percentage) you want to keep in crypto, and how much you want to be converted automatically into dollars in your bank account. They also have a debit card that you can load using a few crypto-currencies. Highly recommended.

When I started with BitPay they didn't have a plugin for the software my site used. I asked them to make one and in a week it was done.

I also recommend ShapeShift. They have a plugin for websites that allows you to accept almost any crypto-currency and have it automatically converted into your choice. If you like bitcoin, you can have Dash, Ethereum, Monero, etc all converted easily. I think it's still a 1% fee for conversion. There is a competitor that charges 1/2%, but isn't as well known or big. Also, I know the owner of ShapeShift personally and he's a good guy. ShapeShift doesn't require accounts or anything to use, although it might require one for the website plugin to access their API.

I've heard good things about Stripe for accepting credit cards. I haven't looked into it myself though so I'm not sure if it meets all of your criteria.

Found this site that covers different options for online payments: https://www.merchantmaverick.com/best-online-credit-card-processing-companies/#9_Pay_with_Amazon

Seems like Stripe gets brought up a lot on the marketing sites I follow but I have no personal experience with it. Pay with Amazon sounds interesting but people still need to log on?

Shawn Klassen-Koop wrote:I've heard good things about Stripe for accepting credit cards. I haven't looked into it myself though so I'm not sure if it meets all of your criteria.

I used Stripe for a while after PayPal closed my account. (Paypal didn't tell me why they closed it, just that they couldn't service me anymore.) Stripe was pretty good, and they at least told me why they had to close my account: the bank they use didn't like my business. The bank made an incorrect claim about it, but there is no way to challenge that. This is one reason why crypto-currencies are needed.

This might be a long shot but I was reading up on PayPal and letting people pay without needing a PayPal account. Found these instructions for making a PayPal account optional:

To allow your customers to use their credit card without a PayPal account:
- Log in to your PayPal account on PayPal.com.
- Click Profile.
- Click My selling tools.
- Beside Web Preferences, click Update.
- Enable "PayPal Account Optional".
- Click Save.

Any chance that could be the solution?

We use Stripe as a primary payment form.  It has been easy to integrate and works well internationally.  It's always of interest to get the fees lower, but even direct merchant services through a bank are fairly expensive and much harder to integrate online.

I would check what Daron suggested, because you can use paypal just as a credit card transactor.  You can also look to venmo service.

Don't you have E-transfer in the good old USA? Here in Canada more and more online sellers are using it as a payment option.
It's almost instant, low cost and all you need are an email address and a bank account.
It is run through the bank's security system.

Daron, I was directed to that thing about six times - it had already been set correctly.  A bunch of time on the phone with paypal got me directed to some branch of paypal that sent me an email which i forwarded to devaka and he seems to have solved the problem!  People can now pay with a credit card without logging in to paypal.

I thought that overnight we would see ten times more conversion, but no such luck.  We are doing more studying.

paul wheaton wrote:Daron, I was directed to that thing about six times - it had already been set correctly.  A bunch of time on the phone with paypal got me directed to some branch of paypal that sent me an email which i forwarded to devaka and he seems to have solved the problem!  People can now pay with a credit card without logging in to paypal.

I thought that overnight we would see ten times more conversion, but no such luck.  We are doing more studying.

Sorry about that Paul - I figured you already had looked at that option... Was just hoping with all the other stuff you all are doing that the simple fix had just slipped by. Good to hear that the payment option is worked out now at least. Sorry it was such a pain - PayPal can be a pain to work with sometimes...

Craig directed me towards the poetry side of things and I'm going to see if I can help with the existing problems.

Daron, that was the exact tidbit of info we needed.   Unfortunately, it turns out that we had things already set correctly and we were using the paypal api instead.  

Craig and i and some of the permies.com staff are meeting tomorrow about email poetry - i hope you can join!

Regarding Paypal... When I was searching more deeply about which payment options to offer when setting up my next online shop, I came across this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsY3AMtneFI

It seems there are hundreds (thousands?) of people that are going/ have gone through the same thing she has. I, too, had my hiccup with Paypal many years ago that left me quite wary of the company. After seeing the above video, it was just what I needed to hear to fully make up my mind as far as using Paypal or not. It's not just from a risk point of view, but also because I don't want to financially support a company with such practices.
Anyway, just wanted to give a more full view of the company in case you haven't seen the video.