I personally think you can do better than PayPal when it comes to integrating a payment method for your online business. One of my favorites is Stripe.
What is Stripe?
Stripe is one of the ways in which you can and you should do better that PayPal. Simply put, Stripe is a payment gateway that helps you collect credit card payments on your online store or website.
What I like about Stripe?
A couple of things I really admire about Stripe are:
Fee Structure
Their fee structure is lower than PayPal. They charge you a flat rate of 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction. There rates can vary country to country but they are always flat.
Account Setup
Account setup is pretty simple as you just have to go to their website and submit your details for a new account.
Open API Structure
They do have an open API structure, so that in the event that stripe does not integrate with your software of your choice you can use the API. This makes sure you get Stripe integrated with whatever software you are using.
Integration
Stripe already integrates well with some of the mainstream software platforms like Wufu forms, FreshBooks, WordPress, ClickFunnels and Wave Accounting.
You can send people invoices via FreshBooks and Wave and get paid via Stripe. With Wufu forms if you have the level of service that allows for payment you can create an order form and get paid directly using that form.
Customize
You can do a ton of things in the user interface such as creating invoices, recurring invoices, subscriptions.
Virtual Terminal
You can take payments over the phone because of the existence of a virtual terminal within the user interface.
Cons
To keep their fees low they have an extended merchant payout schedule. They have a built-in 7-day delay. This can be a problem if you are new and in a cash crunch and need your payments a bit earlier.
Although, if you are using Stripe you might want to get used to that or pay their monthly fees to get around this delay.
All in all, Stripe works better than PayPal for me because of its lower fees than PayPal, ease to setup an account and customization and integration with major platforms.
They keep adding to all this which is great. You can also request for a feature and they might just add it in the future.
You can get your hands on Stripe here.
