Alternative to PayPal?

I was wondering if you guys can suggest an alternative to the PayPal merchant account as they unfairly blocked my account. As PayPal is currently the No.1 merchant account system in the web, i was wondering who comes second, or whose the second best with similar customers as to PayPal and if you use them, how reliable are they.

Ive checkout out some promising ones but they don't compare to paypals registered customers:

Google Checkout: it has lower rates/transaction fees than paypal but it has a lot less customers.

NoChex.com: pay $100 to set up, fees are similar to paypal but not sure on customer base.

Protx: pay $40 a month, in my opinion way too expensive.

merchantinc.com: $20 a month, higher fees.

So i was wondering is it possible to have a successful online business without using PayPal for e-commerce sites, affiliate programs and other types of businesses.

What would you recommend?

Here are the few I have ever dealt with. I don't trust the rest in the world other than those I list here.

1. PayPal
2. Google Checkout
3. Amazon Flexible Payment System (Have not use it yet, it's very promising and very fexible) Huge customer based. Transfer balance has the lowest rate ever.
4. 2Checkout dot com - A little bit higher rate, but it has been in the market since 2000.
5. Authorize dot Net - The most reputable merchant services since 1998. Depends on your volume, you will get different pricing and rate.

To get start with your e-commerce site, I do recommend to use Paypal or Google Checkout. They both allow you to redirect back to your store (code your return URL in the API call) after payment process. So you can have one paypal account for multiple online stores using PayPal payment Pro.

If you are banned by PayPal, you can try to open a new bank account and new paypal account (different email). Just don't do something stupid with paypal, because you may be banned on ebay as well, which could cost you a lot more.

Good luck!

Its funny that you say that, i guess great minds think alike.

I actually tried that method i opened a new bank account and used different email address. But they found out because of my home address, as it had to match with my bank address too. Plus PayPal have my Passport details, Drivers License, National Insurance Card details and Uni Student Card. I had to give them that info to unblock my account before for validation because i didd'nt use PayPal for over a year. now i feel like an idiot for giving them soo much info on myself. I was 19 at the time. But i guess i can only learn from this.

Plus the way that paypal blocked my account for LIFE was sooo unfair, i saw people at ebay selling digital pictures of celebs, the basically copied the pics from Google images and sold them on ebay, completely legal, i checked everything. So thats what i did, then PayPal emailed me that my account was blocked for LIFE, i thought that was a bit far when i haunt breached any of their policies, i remembering to double check when i do anything. They said that i had adult content on them. When there clearly wasnt any, i agrued my case for 4 months and they kept sending me generic emails. I asked them why are there people still selling that kind of stuff on ebay whos account ain't banned, they never got back to me. I wass ssooo pi**ed, i gave them good money through transactions and they still decided to f**k me over.

Luckily my eBay account wasn't banned, but my sales dropped dramatically as i couldn't offer PayPal anymore. Damm ebay and their online merchant papal monopoly, why cant they offer Google checkout. Fair competition man come on...

Ill check into the others, ill mostly end up using Google checkout as it has a powerful brand name that customers wont mind putting in their credit card informations. Its hard to buy domain registration and hosting cause people wither want credit cards or paypal, i don't have either. Ill have to find some other way to bypass all these obstacles.

Thanks for the reccommendations thoguh terencechang.

What happened that you were blocked by Paypal?

I have always been curious as to what actions result in blocks and suspensions.

Well PayPal "thought" that i was selling adult content on ebay. And so they emailed me to ask for sample pics that i got from google image search and sent them to PayPal. They wanted two pics, so one of the pics was a a person with full clothing on and the other contained a person that blocked everything on herself, suitable for a U or a PG audience.

And they basically said that it violated their terms and conditions and blocked me for LIFE. That was the main issue which led me to postpone my business ventures for a year and carry on studying. If it wasn't for them then id probably have several websites up now and my ebay business would of grown. Now i notice that it was just another obstacle that i had to overcome and find ways to pass it if i want to be successful and thats what im doing now with my business plan.

But that PayPal part really did bring me down mainly because of the customer base they have around the world which i lost. And it was unfair as well, if i did have adult content on and they blocked me i would say fair play and i deserve to be blocked. But i didd'nt and that was the thing that bugged me.

Ive seen other anti- PayPal websites and know that im not the only one. which was a little reassuring.

Shawshank Redemptions on, man i love that movie. anyway i hope that answers your question Merkin Man.

There is an article of Amazon's new service on makeuseof.com, maybe there will be alternatives in upcoming comments as well: Amazon Payments - The new PayPal Alternative from Amazon | MakeUseOf.com

You know these thread's are starting to pop up all over the place.... and I'm starting to see why.

<rant>
Paypal has been pissing me off lately. Half the time their IPN's don't work, or if they do, they don't for your customers that use IE7 which is about half the world.

The protection they offer is a sham... You can't buy anything online and expect them to go to bat for you or give you your money back. That is, of course, unless you lie, and say the product you bought was not digital/electronic/transfered over the web/whatever.

Truth is, you're better off not logging in an paying with an AMEX, so you can send them a nice little chargeback. Note, chargeback's are against their TOS also, but AMEX doesn't screw around. lol I'm thankful for that, otherwise Paypal would consistently bend me over and pull some coin out of my you know what.
</rant>

you may also try mooneybookers, alertpay,

2checkout - $49 for signing up

did you contact paypal on your account issues?

Hey mariamarsala, i used to sell ebooks/digital products on ebay and other auction sites, it would really be helpfull if you can suggest an alternative method, and yes FocusThat i contacted them alot of times, i sent them over 20 emails concerning my account but they kept sending me their generic blocked for life messages.

Soooo unfair, i HATE paypal!!!

ill check out moneybookers and alertpay.

Have you tried calling them and speaking to them 1-on-1? I think that is more effective 99% of the time.

Don't listen to this! Paypal sucks!

Ryan is rep damn it.

(can we have an "invited" section only so i can say how I really feel? lol )

as a blatant thread jacking, did you know that paypal owns one of the only (if not the only) one letter domain names:

x.com

check it out.

They don't provide numbers i emailed them and they said they prefered emails. Cant find the number for the UK one.
Everytime i try to login to paypal with my email address i get this big RED message:

This account has been permanently locked with a £0.00 GBP balance. All information associated with this account has been blocked from the PayPal system and cannot be registered with another account.

Man F**k Paypal, they've pis*sed me off soo many times in the past. My only other option is Google checkout which i will need to get up and running. I hope PayPal gets replaced quicky by another online merchant as the NO.1 leader, this may take years! Cant wait that long.

Ill just have to find other ways and do more research. It really pis*ses me off that i won't be able to sell to over 150 million accounts worldwide for something that they got wrong. Ah well these things can only make you stronger and not make you rely on one service.

But when my account got blocked, that really did HURT me alot i just got to get over it and find a new better source. Or make my own payment service lol why not, its possible i guess!!!

I've used epassporte for a few years (combined with paypal) with no problems. Very similar to paypal (you can send/receive money from other users) and also accepts adult biz.

You need a credit card to create your account and pay a $5-$10 fee (not really sure of this value) to get a virtual credit card number (that you can use to make payments on the internet). For $35-$40 you can ask a visa card that you can use in stores, atms, etc.

Were these copyrighted photos? If they were pictures of celebrities, I imagine they were.

My guess is that you got banned for repeated copyright violation (regardless of what the automated emails said)...it doesn't matter how many people are doing it, if you're going to steal someone else's property, you are going to risk getting banned.

Thanks for the info on epassporte but i dont have a credit card. Ill check out the website though. But as Runum commented on Randy Pausch(The last lecture) that those brick walls are put there for you to prove how badly you really want it. If it was easy it wouldn't be worth doing.

I always think of this before, then i get my mentality back and start fighting. Just to make it clear i have no interests in the adult biz never had never will. Paypal made an incorrect assumption which caused me my business.

Thanks for all the info though, i really appreciate it.

J Scott- No they were not copyright, the pics that they emailed me for were random people whose pics are available on the public domain. They didn't ask me for the celeb pictures.

CNNMoney had an article that mentioned 5 PayPal alternatives - The article was posted Feb 11, 2008

digitalriver dot com
2checkout dot com (Which was mentioned in an earlier post)
alertpay dot com
trialpay dot com
ejunkie dot com

(I wasn't sure if it is acceptable to post the URL to the article)

Do a google search on paypal alternatives.

FYI - Paypal used to be my only accepted method of payment and my site income went through the roof (okay it was a small house) once I started accepting major credit cards as payment options. I am not that familiar with selling on auction sites and understand that this may not be an option for all e-commerce business.

Ive searched all the recommendations and found the most reputable merchant accounts are:

-Google Checkout(No set up fee, + less transaction fee than paypal)
-Authorize.Net(Not listed on website , had to email them about fees, waiting for a reply)
-2Checkout ($50 set up, + 5.5% per transaction)
-Nochex (Entry level online payment for the UK)
-World Pay (Too expensive for me though, $60 a month + $400 set up fee)

Partner.
Create a company, partner with somebody (girldfriend, sister, brother, mother, etc) and use your partner's contact information for the new account. That will solve your issue about paypal, but nothing prevents your newly formed company of being banned as well if you keep doing the same business. You do need to understand why you were banned while others are not, otherwise it will keep happening over and over again.