Forms of Shadows

What is Pay Pal?

With PayPal, you can start accepting credit card payments instantly. As the world's number one online payment service, PayPal is the fastest way to open your doors to over 40 million member accounts worldwide. Best of all, it's completely free to sign up!

PayPal (PP) has a powerful integration API (Application Programmer’s Interface) but it is one of the most technical ones to be found. Unless you are using PP’s built-in cart features, or are integrating with a PayPal compatible shopping cart (of which there are many), you’re going to either have or be willing to hire someone with programming skills.

PP is owned by eBay which makes it the only publicly traded processor that I personally trust.

PP supports the sale of both physical and digital goods. It also supports recurring membership options which can provide either access to password protected areas or recurring shipments of physical or digital goods. But what’s most amazing is that it can support all of these options on one site if you want it to!

The PayPal Cart

The PP cart is integrated with the PayPal.com site so there is nothing to download or install on your own site. You simply use the PP button wizard to generate payment links for each product that you sell. The link adds the product to the cart and then gives the shopper the option to continue shopping or proceed to checkout.

The shopping cart will handle digital or physical products but is not designed to handle recurring orders or memberships.

Buy Now Buttons
Buy Now Buttons are actually HTML links that you can create to sell an individual product or service from your site or oyu can use it as a link in an e-zine article or email. Use the Button Wizard to create buttons when you need then and then paste the code wherever you want it. Buy Now buttons can support physical, digital and recurring order types.
Subscriptions and Recurring Payments
There is a Subscriptions and Recurring Payments manager that will automatically create your member’s user anme and password and will handle unsubscribe and failed payment situations without your intervention at all. You just concentrate on selling. There are some technical requirements for setting this option up, but they are not difficult and the instructions are clear.
There are also Donation links for charity solicitations, an automatic invoice wizard for service companies, and a Payment Request wizard that sends requests for payments to people who owe you money. the payment email is formatted with a return link to your PayPal account and the link is coded with the amount that you are requesting.
Understanding how PayPal Operates

PayPal is a Person-to-Person Payment Processors (P2P). That means that people can send money to each other using their PayPal Accounts. PayPal is also a third-party credit card processor, so people can also pay you using most major credit cards.

When someone pays you via PayPal the funds are held in your online account until you withdraw them. You can withdraw by direct deposit to you bank account, or via an ATM using a PayPal STM card, or you can have a check sent to you. There is no charge for direct deposit withdrawals. All other methods have a variable service charge.

PayPal can be integrated as deeply into your web site as you want it to be or you can use it with only email notifications enabled. PayPal has a very extensive Instant Payment Notification (IPN) system which would be beyond the scope of this article to get into. There are an assortment of major and minor functions and routines for integrating the transaction process and PayPal provides detailed documentation on their web site.

Most people use either PayPal’s integrated shopping cart or a third-party cart that supports PayPal.

You can get an amazing amount of information posted to your site after a transaction. Like 2CO, this information comes as an HTTP post and includes not only the standard customer contact information and product sale data, but currency exchange rates if you accept payments in multiple currencies, payment status and over 70 other fields of information. Of course, you don’t have to use them all but they’re all available if you need them.

When you signup for PayPal, you can start accepting credit card payments instantly. As the world's number one online payment service, PayPal is the fastest way to open your doors to over 40 million member accounts worldwide. Best of all, it's completely free to sign up! To sign up or learn more, click here: https://www.paypal.com/us/mrb/pal