Thursday, February 28, 2013

PayPal Pros amp; Cons


Acceptance
PayPal is a widely accepted method for buying and selling things online. While it was originally used mostly in transactions between two private parties, such as for eBay auctions, PayPal is now an accepted payment tool for almost all e-commerce websites. The widespread acceptance of PayPal makes it a great way to pay for shopping online. Checking out and paying with PayPal is usually much faster than paying with a credit card, because your financial information is already linked to your PayPal account.
Email Linkage
Another advantage of PayPal is that a given PayPal account is linked to an email address. This means that the only information that you need to give someone in order to receive a payment via PayPal is the email address associated with your account. This makes for an extremely convenient and streamlined payment process, however it does come with the risk of sending payments to the wrong recipient if email address are entered incorrectly.
Transfer Speed
The payment process of PayPal is fast and easy to understand, but the rate at which funds are ultimately transferred can vary. It can sometimes take several days for a pending payment to be cleared, and until a payment is cleared, funds will not be available. Another issue is that funds received via PayPal are added to your PayPal account balance, not the balance of any linked checking or savings accounts. After receiving payments with PayPal, you must schedule a balance transfer from PayPal to an outside account unless you plan to keep the money in your PayPal account. Transferring funds from PayPal to a linked account usually takes a few business days, which can further delay the time until you actually have access to funds you receive with PayPal.
Security
One of the main reasons people use PayPal is for financial security when shopping online. While any online financial transaction is more risky than going to a bank, using PayPal is for online shopping avoids entering financial information at every individual website you visit for shopping. This can help reduce the chance of having your financial information getting into the wrong hands.
Fees
One of the biggest drawbacks of using PayPal is that certain payments will incur fees. Money transfers made between friends and family are not charged fees, but payments made for the transfer of goods and services are charged a flat rate of 2.9 percent for transfers under $3,000 plus an additional 30 cents. Fee percentages are lower for payments greater than $3,000.

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