PayPal. E-commerce Solution
or Ebay Stepchild?

PayPal has been around a while, at least in Internet years. It is a payment gateway that is best known for its ability to help people transfer money when they use auction sites like Ebay. But now PayPal can offer web site owners and developers more options in e-commerce than they may realize.

There are a variety of payment options within the PayPal web site. You can stick with their basic payment system where you sign up for an account and you can immediately transfer cash to anyone with an e-mail address. This is a great way to pay for stuff when you win or sell on an auction site, but what if you need a real e-commerce solution for your web site? PayPal now offers three levels to help you. They have Web Site Payments Pro where customers can pay for things on your site or the PayPal site. The second offering is E-mail Payments where customers get an e-mail and can then pay their bill on the PayPal web site. The third option is what's called a Traditional Merchant Account. This is a full blown e-commerce solution where you can process credit cards on your site, and you have a great deal more control over many aspects of the shopping cart and the payment processing. This final option will cost you the most to implement and run.

Overall, PayPal is a solid option if you want to dip your toes in the e-commerce pool. But keep in mind that when people have to leave your site to go to the PayPal site to make a payment, it doesn't project as professional an appearance as if you were able to process their credit cards on your own site directly. That is where you need a merchant account (or a software package that enables you to access a merchant account). Many web hosting accounts will also provide some built in e-commerce solutions that can be tied into your hosting account directly. These can be a safe bet, since your hosting company is already set up to use them. So the moral is, if you need basic payment abilities, look at PayPal. If you need something more full featured, you have a variety of options. But the best place to look first are those solutions tied to your existing hosting account. If you don't have a hosting account yet, do a Google search on "e-commerce solutions" and start digging. There is a great deal of options out there, so tread carefully and do your research.

- Kaufman Web Design™