
Paypal alternatives - iuguy
http://blog.webdistortion.com/2010/07/28/paypal-alternatives-e-commerce/
======
jdp23
Particularly timely in the wake of PayPal's decision to suspend payments to
Wikileaks ...

EDIT: I was surprised to see this comment voted down. PayPal suspending
payments to WikiLeaks is a clear signal to any startup hosting potentially-
controversial comment needs to be concerned about it happening to them. The
article, written earlier, doesn't mention that, so my comment adds value to
the conversation. What was the reasoning behind downvoting it?

~~~
vog
Although I find it somewhat strange that people didn't use all those previous
predatory practices of PayPal as an opportunity to look for alternatives, I'm
glad they take at least _this_ opportunity.

In my opinion, PalPal should have boycotted for years because of what they did
to many other people and organizations, especially to non-profit-making
organizations.

EDIT: I don't know why your comment has been voted down, but I didn't vote up
because to me it is pretty obvious that the submission of this article is
connected to the Wikileaks story.

~~~
Anechoic
* I find it somewhat strange that people didn't use all those previous predatory practices of PayPal as an opportunity to look for alternatives,*

I've been looking and looking, but the one thing that keeps me with PayPal as
a vender is their debit card (and the instant access to cash it give s you).
The moment a credible alternative offers that, I'm gone.

That said, the Obopay method of depositing money to your bank account every
day may work - I'll have to investigate and see if those deposits happen
quickly or if there is a day or two processing delay.

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jfb
How many of these are actually "easier", in the sense of reducing friction for
your customers? I'm curious, more than anything else.

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reyk
Not quite a PayPal alternative, but I am currently developing a client for
Open Transactions.

Here's the wiki: <https://github.com/FellowTraveler/Open-Transactions/wiki>

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vog
This project looks great, but is there any financial institution supporting or
using that protocol?

~~~
reyk
The project is very young. Open Transactions was posted to Cryptome
(<http://cryptome.org/0002/open-transactions.htm>) on the 4th September, which
is when I first heard of it, and I've only been working on the client for
approx. two weeks during the time when I am not in class.

However, the hope is that once there are some working clients it should be
trivial to issue assets and to run a transaction server, so anyone can create
and start issuing currency backed with whatever they want. Hopefully some pre-
existing currency providers will run servers and issue certificates, but I
also hope that with the availability of easy to use clients and simple to
deploy servers that the private currency ecosystem will really start to
flourish.

N.B., this has not received any real peer review yet, but is based on OpenPGP,
OpenSSL and uses Lucre for blind signatures.

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thinkcomp
FaceCash (<http://www.facecash.com>) should be in the list, too. We're not
international yet, however.

~~~
vog
This is a nice addition to the list.

However, their main site takes about 13 seconds to load. This is quite slow
for a company that advertises their service to be "quick like a fox".

~~~
thinkcomp
On my machine, it took 1.47 seconds according to Firebug. Where are you
located?

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rimantas
Guys, if you are interested just drop me a line (email in profile) and will
give client-side optimized versions of you front page and one of the content
pages with explanation what was done and why for free.

~~~
thinkcomp
Thanks for the offer. I could be wrong but I think our page is fairly
optimized at this point--I think any delay may be DNS-related since the
majority of it seems to occur while the domain is resolving. Not sure what's
up with that...

~~~
henrikschroder
For me, it spends about 1 second getting the page, then it spends about 1-2
seconds each re-downloading the js files: jquery, jquery-watermark, shared,
and shared-jquery. They're all loaded sequentially. The rest of the assets
seem to be properly cached.

~~~
thinkcomp
This is correct from what I'm seeing. We know about some issues with the
Apache configuration that seem to be delaying the JavaScript downloads, but
otherwise we actually have spent a fair bit of time optimizing things.

To clarify, I really appreciate everyone's feedback here, I just don't think
it's a page problem, I think it's a DNS or server configuration problem.

~~~
henrikschroder
Well, seems like you fixed the caching of the js assets at least. That made
the pages load in one second for me, instead of six seconds. Quite an
improvement! :-)

------
known

         Allpay.net -- Recommended for U.K. Only
         BidPay.com -- Out Of Business 2 Years
         CertaPay -- Recommended for CANADA Only
         Checkfree -- NOT RECOMMENDED
         HyperWALLET -- NOT RECOMMENDED
         Moneybookers -- Recommended for ALL
         Nochex -- Recommended for U.K. Residents and Certain Others
         Ozpay.biz -- Out Of Business 3+ Years
         Paymate -- Recommended for Australia & New Zealand
         ProPay -- Recommended for U.S. Sellers
         Xoom -- NOT RECOMMENDED

~~~
tkanet
Not involved in any of those cited ...but just a question. Who says X
alternative is NOT recommended ?

Is that not recommended because it is new ? or because it does not comply with
X regulatory compliance or just because you dont like them.

Also, all these alternative do not target the same marketplaces that paypal
has grown up with. Some address remittance for example. Others P2P payments.
some national. other international.

I think this is just anti-innovation, labels that do not mean anything and so
easy easy to throw into a new innovation.

When Paypal started, everyone was saying the same.So lets give a chance to the
new players and respect their own targets.

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rms
I think all of these people hating on Paypal have never had a real merchant
account. At least when the buyer complains on Paypal you have a chance of not
losing your money, where with a credit card chargeback you are almost
definitely screwed.

~~~
jasonkester
One of the benefits of Paypal being so crap is that we all eventually end up
with real merchant accounts. That way, a chargeback means you lose money on
one sale, vs. Paypal where a chargeback means that your entire business goes
down for a week.

I don't mind giving money back to customers who are unhappy. I go out of my
way to do so before it comes to a chargeback. As such, my mind can't spin
"easier to keep your unhappy customers' money" into a feature for a payment
processor.

~~~
Estragon
That's going to depend strongly on the extent of your outlay in dealing with
the customer up to that point. If your business is SaaS, giving money back is
relatively painless, but if there's actual inventory involved it could be a
real hassle.

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makmanalp
I think braintree is a big one: <http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/>

~~~
akmiller
Only if you're an established company or have wealthy founders that can
personally guarantee the account. That is the good (and maybe bad) thing about
paypal...pretty much anyone, with a decent credit score, can open a merchant
account.

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bcl
Stay away from gpal/gunpal -- their motives were honorable, but their
management wasn't.

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zmmmmm
Anyone used Paymate?

They seem pretty attractive, esp. since buyers do not need to have an account
to give you money - that seems to be the key feature that PayPal has on most
competitors. They also do recurring payments which is pretty nice as well.

I would love to hear any reviews of them as I am actively considering adding
them as an option for my site.

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captainspanner
Nochex(.com) is a good alternative that I have used many times - a good
service for buyers, low fees for merchants

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kevruger
I've been using Venmo (venmo.com) quite a bit. Real easy to use and no fees at
all so far whatsoever. It's in beta, but you can sign up for an account if you
download the app on your iphone or android device for free. I also have about
8 invites left if anyone is interested. Anybody using this as well

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dahjelle
Vanco Services (<https://www.vancoservices.com/vancoservices_solutions.htm>)
may be a solution for some. The company I work for has both used their
services and partnered with them, and they've been great to work with.

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jayzee
I canceled my paypal account. I am a resident and did not want to get in
trouble with immigration authorities so unfortunately could not tell paypal
off as to why I canceled my account. I only chose the option 'Issue with Terms
of Use.' Hopefully they will get the message.

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callmeed
I'm almost done with my DIY groupon clone that lets merchants use their own
PayPal account to sell deals.

Are any of these a viable 2nd alternative? Should I consider something else
for international markets?

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jmtame
wepay should be on this list

~~~
ams6110
Was just looking at Wepay... from what I can see you need to create an account
with them in order to make a payment. That would be a point of friction for a
lot of customers. When I'm buying something online I don't even want to have
to set up an account with the vendor, let alone another one with the payment
processor.

~~~
jmtame
but that's the point of wepay, it's group payment so you need to setup your
group. in the long run, it makes tracking how much people owe each other much
easier. they still processes payments.

overall, it's a great alternative to paypal for roommates and basic group
expenses.

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kingsidharth
Very nice!Not the Money Bookers, they sell your email addresses!

~~~
SeanDav
What about some proof or reasonable grounds?

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heyitsnick
I have had a moneybookers account for years, and it's on a unique email
address. I've never received any spam to it, or email at all other than from
moneybookers itself.

Parent comment, please do supply some more info.

~~~
kingsidharth
I, too, signed up for MoneyBookers with a unique email id under my dad's name.
(The only place on internet I am using that combination of Name and email).And
after 3 months of inactive account I was flooded with emails from random
spammers. Emails sent to that unique id addressed to my dad.Don't have the
emails now, but will try and look for a screenshot I saved sometime back.

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iwr
When all else fails, just use a merchant account.

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vladocar
Is there some good micropayments site?

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jfeldstein2
Funny that it includes amazon payments..

Oh, and there's also wepay.com

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rprasad
The problem with most of these alternatives is that they are not ready for
prime time.

Google Checkout has limited availability internationally. Furthermore, it has
abysmal, nearly non-existent customer support. That's fine for a hobby site,
but not for something a business relies on for its income.

Most of the other sites charge exchange fees for US transactions. That's fine
if you don't have customers in the US, but not so good if you do.

Digital River is great (and Microsoft uses them to run its online store)...but
not so great for small businesses. It's designed for and sold to large
corporations. It can handle small businesses, but it's like using a
sledgehammer when you need a hammer.

Amazon is really the only alternative for most situations, but it's _also_
part of the Wikileaks mess...

~~~
Vivtek
Wait, how is Amazon involved?

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ichc-werker
They took down Wikileaks' AWS instances.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/amazon-and-
wikileaks-f...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/amazon-and-wikileaks-
first-amendment-only-strong)

~~~
Vivtek
Well, dang, who _isn't_ \-- Google, I guess?

