If you have a business of any kind on ebay it is now a requirement to have an account on paypal. Paypal is an online payment system that allows you to accept credit cards, debit cards, and bank account payments. After you obtain a paypal debit card you can take out as much as $400 ever 24 hours. You can also have a check sent to you which takes about two weeks, or you can have the funds transferred to you bank account within 5 business days. Paypal also has hidden phone numbers to contact them, a tactic adopted from eBay. If you ever have a problem contacting paypal you can find all of the phone numbers to paypal and ebay on this site.
The payments from the buyer go directly into an online account that you can access almost anytime. I say almost because there are an occasional site update or outage, as with many other sites but then you will, one day, deal with the fact that paypal has frozen your account with no access to your cash. This had happened to me a few times.
My Papal account was frozen without any notification, this had happened to me three times! One day I decided to go shopping for cloths, when I attempt to use my paypal debit card, my paypal debit card came up DECLINED! I was positive I had plenty of cash in that paypal account because I checked my account before I left. I assured the clerk that it was a debit card and there was enough in the account, I had her try again and again it came up declined. I ran to the cash station machine and sure enough, it was declined. I raced home thinking my paypal account was hacked yet again, for the third time (yes, I was also a hack victim) - only to find out my paypal account was frozen, I needed to come up with documents to prove who I was although I had already done this when I signed up. Paypal locked up my cash that I desperately needed furthermore they wanted me to prove who I was. I now keep that paypal account as empty as possible, I have also found alternative places that are comparable to paypal.
EBay has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to the payment methods sellers may advertise in their listings. In the past I personally listed my pament methods as:
Payment must be received to this seller in full within ten days from auction close, unless a payment extension is approved by seller.
Paments accepted:
Cashiers Check (US only)
Money Order (US only)
Personal Check (US only)
Western Union
Bank wire tranfer (all fees paid by sender)
I never "listed" paypal as an option because of all the problems I had in the past of hacking, freezing my account, etc. I have now removed all of the keywords in my listings for the fear that ebay will soon search for these keywords and close auctions and perhaps suspend some sellers.
The new eBay policy bans paper payments in October 2008, never the less sellers may accept checks and money orders, as long as they don't solicit such payments from buyers.
You do need to open a paypal account if you are going to do business through eBay. Never the less there are chances that your paypal account can be frozen or you can lose your account for high charge back rates, non shipment of items, too many complaints, etc. There may also be the chance that your buyer has one of the alternative accounts to paypal. You need a backup online payment service in addition to your paypal account. I suggest AlertPay or , these are two of my favorites, AlertPay is like PayPal and it is free to sign up.
eBay will not allow most other online payment systems, I'm not consistant enough for a merchant account and I am not paying a fee to propay. EBay has a three click rule from your auction page. I have links on my auctions that link to a "PAYMENT OPTIONS" page on one of my web sites, from that page potential customers will need to click on one of my links to my payment options, like AlertPay, your potential customers will need to click another link to enter the site which makes it 3 - 4 clicks. eBay will not allow some payment options to be linked directly from the auction page, my method beats this. When you join AlertPay make sure you sign up for a business account.
I also accept Western Union, Bank wire transfer, Checks, Money Orders, Cashiers checks. I take a risk on checks and usually won't wait two weeks before shipping, I would contact the police if I was ever stiffed. I do suggest holding any checks from your country at least two weeks although clearing does vary from each country. I will not take any Checks, Money Orders, Cashiers checks from out of my country. There are a lot of counterfeits floating around and it can take up to three months before you find out that it is no good, leaving you at a lose of the item you sold and paying the bank back, this is a scam you can look into through a google search.
