Well, using PayPal sent me to a less than perfect state of mind after learning that they have a $500 limit that customers can pay at once unless they’re registered AND verified PayPal users!  There’s no way we’re asking clients to do so, would anyone?

When it comes to PayPal alternatives, obviously, there’s hundreds, maybe thousands of really good alternatives to choose from as long as you have the time to do the research and read the fine print of them all. In our case, the one thing we seem to have less of each year and is rapidly becoming a commodity is time itself. Therefore, I won’t take up much of your time here, or ours by going into deep comparisons between each of them all, or why one’s better than the other. Save yourself the time, and do what we did. Trust the name, trust the company, trust Google- trust Google CheckOut. Plain and simple, the overall winner as the best merchant account alternative in our book!

For those able to get a “real” merchant account, go for it! An online business always seems to be more accepted if the payment transaction is a smooth one, with SSL protecting your data, a toll free number for them and some type of guaranty. If whatever you’re buying is shipping out, you’d also want to ensure you provide with easy tracking of the package so that when you put it all together, the client knows they paid securely, and that there’s a human being on the other end they can call for more info, or in case there’s a problem. The guaranty is peace of mind that what they purchased is real, and the shipping info can help them alleviate any anxiety they have awaiting delivery of that new iPhone or whatever else they bought from your site. Ensure that process is a smooth one and you’ll have gained another client for life.

But what about those without the bank merchant account? Skip the rest and go for Google CheckOut! We’re absolutely satisfied with the level of success we’ve experienced with the transactions we’ve ran through them for this test. In one such transaction, Google actually canceled an order because they didn’t seem to be able to verify the transaction was legitimate, and as a result, it was flagged as a possible attempt by a consumer to rip us off (the merchant, in this case). Google sent us a few automated emails to explain why it had canceled the transaction, but we were extremely glad that it was due to them watching out for the merchant, not because the merchant’s client was not a registered Google CheckOut user, like PayPal did. We also did a few tests as the consumer, paying by Google CheckOut and as a merchant using the invoicing feature, like PayPal’s feature that allows anyone to send an invoice which includes a link for the end user to click on taking them to a page showing the header or logo of the merchant, along with easy instructions for payment via credit card. Google CheckOut outscored PayPal in all aspects of the test, and for that, we can definitely recommend giving it a try and possible adopting it as a payment alternative for this and all of our other online businesses we have now and those coming up in the near future. Way to Goooogle!