The Cons of PayPal

Filed in archive Technology on January 19, 2010

© richiemontalbo


In our last post we talked about the positive benefits to using PayPal but now let's discuss its less enticing qualities. These are the reasons why you should carefully weigh the consequences before setting up paypal access and ecommerce on your website.

Cons:

1. PayPal has one of the highest rates of employee theft of any company. Putting your credit card information in the site is not too terribly secure.

2. Limited fraud protection. If someone does break into your account or use your credit card PayPal doesn't offer very many services to stop or fix this.

3. PayPal has some of the largest phishing scams out there. Unverified emails saying you've purchased things, or someone accessed your account is rampant.

4. PayPal has the ability to freeze your account without warning at any time. Let's say your site suddenly gets a boost in traffic and your donations go up, if PayPal suspects this is fraudulent activity they will shut your account down and you have to prove the business is legit.

5. There are additional fees to have address verification on any transaction.

6. There are no explanations of returns or refunds to your account.

It's unfortunate that there is currently no service that truly competes with PayPal. You either use this or go full-fledged ecommerce. This is when you review your target audience and decide if they are comfortable using paypal or not.

Have you had a bad experience with PayPal?