[analog31]

I use a PayPal merchant account for my very small side-business, selling a specialized gadget that's not very expensive. Over the past 7 years, PayPal has been utterly flawless. I have had zero issues. I monitor web forum chat, and enough people have commented about my product that I would know it if someone had a bad experience, or was reluctant to buy from me, due to PayPal.

This is without discounting any of the horror stories that I've read. In my little niche market, those stories tend to involve the eBay side of PayPal.

Once in a while I research alternatives to PP, and have really not found one that caters to the super-small business.

[djim]

Stripe, Amazon Payments, WePay, & Square come to mind. Paypal is great, until it isn't.

[analog31]

I looked into Stripe recently. Unless I mis-understand the technology, it's an API, and an Application Programming Interface requires Application Programming. In other words, I would need to operate a website, physically or in the cloud, and create the program that generates credit card transactions. I would also have to manage all of the policies that PayPal covers for me, such as dispute resolution.

PayPal gives me access to USPS first class mail shipping, which USPS doesn't even offer via their own website. This saves me money on shipping costs.

Last time I looked, Amazon seemed more complicated, and oriented towards bigger businesses than mine. I don't remember what I concluded about WePay and Square.

Everything is great until it isn't -- kind of a corollary to survivorship bias I guess.

[joepie91_]

None of these are usable as a customer, in a country where creditcards aren't commonplace (eg. the Netherlands, Germany, ...)