PayPal is one of the most popular online business finances companies. PayPal was a pioneer in online payments systems and currently allows customers to send, hold, and receive money in 25 different currencies. However, in recent years, a good number of customers have complained about various aspects of PayPal. This post will cover some of the negative aspects of using PayPal and some of the best available alternatives.
A lot of the complaints about PayPal originate from sellers of goods and services online who use PayPal to accept payment. Some sellers have written in reviews about PayPal that PayPal will hold sellers’ funds if there is any sort of risk in a transaction. Sellers have complained that PayPal will not release their funds until the seller waits for a considerable amount of time and provides many details about generated sales.
Another complaint from both sellers and buyers is that PayPal’s phone support is not the best and that correcting any sort of PayPal issue can take considerable amounts of time. Another issue is that PayPal is in some cases not the cheapest option for a consumer to send money online or pay for goods and services.
For these reasons, users of PayPal are switching to alternatives. The leading wire transfer platform in terms of growing popularity is undoubtedly Veem, which lets users safely send money online for business in the most simple and inexpensive manner possible. Their goal is to simplify the payment process rather than contribute to its growing complexity in today’s world.
One of the other popular alternatives to PayPal is Stripe. Stripe has lower international payment rates and has a wider range of international payment options and support; also, Stripe supports some different forms of payment such as Bitcoin, Android Pay, Apple Pay, and ACH. Bitcoin transactions are charged at a lower rate of 0.8% per transaction compared to the credit card fee of both PayPal and Stripe of 2.9% for credit cards.
Another good alternative to PayPal is Dwolla. Dwolla offers a lower transaction fee of just $0.25 when using ACH. If a consumer plans to send a receive a lot of bank transfers, Dwolla can be a very inexpensive choice. For transactions, sellers and buyers can save a considerable amount of money by paying the lowered fees with Dwolla.
Dwolla allows the user to make an instant cash transfer and is extremely quick when it comes to transferring cash to bank accounts. Dwolla also currently offers free transactions if the total dollar amount of a transaction is under $10. Dwolla also has privacy advantages. Dwolla never shares financial information during a transaction with the seller. Dwolla only shares phone number, email address, and Dwolla ID. By not sharing financial information, customers are less at risk of their financial information being stolen.
Another newer alternative is Amazon Payments. Amazon Payments is very similar to PayPal. Amazon Payments uses their own checkout system to securely process payments and allows customers to use their Amazon account to monitor transactions.
For sellers, another alternative to use is Authorize.net. Authorize.net allows sellers to process credit cards directly with the credit card companies instead of processing through a middleman such as PayPal. Authorize.net has some advanced business features such as QuickBooks integration. Authorize.net offers detailed analytics and an Advanced Fraud Detection Suite. Compared to PayPal, Authorize.net does charge a higher monthly fee to use the company.
Today, there are many companies that offer the ability to send, hold, and receive money. PayPal has some strong competition from companies such as Veem, Stripe, and Dwolla that allow both buyers and sellers lower transaction costs and possibly better support and security.