PayPal is fantastic when it comes to easily taking credit cards and payments over the Internet. But if they’re your sole source of payment processing and PayPal freezes your account, you are well and truly stuck up a creek without a paddle.
It happened to me the other week, and I was distraught. I hadn’t realised quite how much I use my PayPal account in my daily life as well as for business. A lot of big online stores such as Argos etc use Paypal and I always use it as my preferred payment method if offered, It saves me getting the debit card out..
Apparently they targeted quite a few online marketers at the time, (I was in good company), and it was a pain in the butt for most of them. Luckily mine was all sorted fairly quickly, I just had to send them a few extra bank details, prove who I was and I was back up and running in no time.
It is scary though and it’s why you should take defensive and proactive action before stuff like this happens. It certainly made me think about what I would do if I ever lost my account (And I’ve had mine since 2002). I’ve always had a great relationship with PayPal, but you never know what will happen in the future.
So I’m seriously considering getting an account with other payment options, such as Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, or any other PayPal alternatives. There are plenty out there, google “PayPal checkout alternatives” to see lots of other options. To be honest I was quite surprised at the variety.
Once you’ve got an account with one of these payment processors, integrate it with your shopping cart, CMS plugin or whatever you’re using, and leave it turned off until you need it. Then if you do experience an issue with PayPal you can simply turn it off and turn on your other payment method.
Imagine the peace of mind taking this simple step can give you.
