Collected by webdistortion

Paypal is one of the biggest and most widely adopted forms of online payment on the web today. With the weight of Ebay behind it, PayPal has truly went from strength to strength, and is a well recognised web brand. That said, it hasn’t avoided negative press, with reports of accounts being frozen, and Paypal slow to respond to support queries, many people have been forced to review and compare other options.  Whilst many of these don’t yet have the user base of PayPal, they may serve to help you out when searching for alternatives.

Google Checkout

URL: http://checkout.google.com/

Google Checkout is Google’s attempt at a replacement for PayPal, and is still very much an inferior product, with only a small subset of the features offered by others. As for the actual transaction costs, they have completely mimicked the tiered cost structure of PayPal, as low as 1.4% + £0.20 per transaction, but as high as 3.4% + £0.20 depending on your monthly sales volume. further details can be found on pricing here.

In a similar vein to PayPal, Checkout is a middle man solution – storing credit and debit cards in its system, and then using those to transfer funds to a fro a bank account.  With the ability to embed “buy now” buttons if shopping cart functionality isn’t needed.

The adoption of Google checkout hasn’t been all that they have hoped, but that could all change pretty soon. If TechCrunch’s prediction on Google Games is correct, we could see a much more mainstream take up of Google Checkout. At time of writing they were running house ads that looked like this isn’t far of the mark.  Technical support for Google Checkout would need to improve somewhat if they are going to get the traction they need however; an outage of the service back in April saw many developers and e-commerce merchants disgruntled, with no apparent response from the Google team. Checkout is available to customers in both the U.S and Europe.

Money Bookers

URL: http://www.moneybookers.com/

Money Bookers is a UK based company,  and is Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority of the United Kingdom (FSA). They offer a number of benefits including sending money securely worldwide to anyone with an email address – even if the recipient does not have a Moneybookers account yet, and accept business from lots of different currencies.  January 2010 they were reporting a user base of 10.8 million accounts – although this doesn’t indicate how many active.

Following the online wallet model, they hold all payments in limbo prior to transferring through to the final recipient, giving you some amount of protection. Escrow services are available for auction services. All previous transactions can be found in the history section of your account which can be accessed at any time and the data can be easily exported to an excel file if you want to maintain a digital backup. In the setup of an account there are a lot of verification procedures, which can take time, and they are certainly not as easy to use for someone in the US compared to someone in Europe. That level of protection will however help to give users piece of mind.

Their fees are on a flat per transaction basis, where uploading fees to a moneybookers account is free, but withdrawing funds from your account costs you. Further details for different countries can be found here.  As with Google Checkout and Paypal, they do offer a payment API - however there didn’t seem to be any quick “copy and paste to buy now” type scenario, which will put off some of the less technical users who are looking for a quick e-commerce solution. That said, requesting money is a simple matter of logging in and sending a money bookers email.

Paymate

URL: http://www.paymate.com

Availability: Australia, USA, New Zealand

Paymate provides secure, reliable and innovative Internet-based payment services to buyers in 57 countries around the world and sellers in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. You can use Paymate to receive online payments via credit card, and like PayPal – you don’t need to have a merchant facility with a bank.

Although this is a service which exists inside particular locales, it is still a worth competitor to PayPal, and has performed particularly well on Ebay Australia – where Ebay were forced to accept it as an alternative payment provider for fears of anti-trust litigation.

Details on the fees charged can be found here – with the fee for buyers in the UK at the time of writing being 3% + 0.25p  per transaction regardless of the size of transaction. However there does seem to be charges for chargebacks and a credit check charge for new customers opening an account.

OboPay

URL: https://www.obopay.com/

Obopay is one of the first mobile payment systems to make it to the web, enabling customers to transfer money to one another right from the mobile phone.  Technically this is achieved using a combination of the technologies offered on mobile devices – traditional SMS, WAP,  HTML / Web apps and bespoke iPhone applications – allowing them to cover all bases regardless of  the handset capabilities.

With more and more of the web moving mobile, its no surprise to see startups taking advantage of this, and wedging a foothold in this space. For example in May that announce that they were going to allow banks a branded payment solution to take advantage of the growing mobile trend – saving them the hassle of the implementation, and allowing OboPay to get on the pig’s back so to speak.

Amazon Payments

URL: https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/personal/money

Amazon have a number of interesting products under their ‘Payments’ banner. They have a system  for sending money which is free to use for sending money between Amazon users, and they have a number of more ‘E-commerce’ related products. If you are looking to just send and receive money in the U.S. they have a pretty attractive offering.  If however, you are needing a transaction option, you are going to have to pay for the privilege.

All of Amazon Payments uses their databases stored internally to aid with the checkout process, essentially giving sellers less hassle with the checkout process, also giving access to Amazon’s patented ‘One Click order’ services. In a similar vein to PayPal, they also offer cut and paste HTML code for their Simple Pay product, which can get you up and running quite quickly if you only have a handful of digital products to sell. Processing is performed on Amazon servers, prior to the customer being returned to finish the checkout process, which isn’t that big a deal considering its an out of the box payment solution.

As for costings, this is worked out on a per transaction basis, with fees starting at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for volumes under $3000. See more details on the pricing for business accounts here.

At time of writing, Amazon Payments UK hadn’t been rolled out, and the service exists for the U.S. only.

Notable Mentions – Digital Software Carts

These other links and systems may be suitable for a variety of scenarios, including digital shopping carts, card processing and digital wallet solutions. Some of them mirror the free software features found in PayPal, some of them are just bare bones solutions, but hopefully they will be useful for you to review.

E-Junkie

URL: http://www.e-junkie.com/

Provides shopping cart software which integrates with PayPal and other card processing gateways. If you are selling digital goods, thoroughly recommended folks.

Kagi

URL:: http://www.kagi.com/

In a similar vein to E-junkie, Kagi offers a digital goods delivery, and integrated shopping cart experience solution for those looking to get up and running without the hassle of setting up a full e-commerce store.

Digital River

URL: http://www.digitalriver.com

Digital River’s Element 5 product is also used across the web for digital software delivery, and its shopping cart is well respected.

Other PayPal Alternatives

Some of these additional alternatives may also be applicable to your particular situation.

1. Neteller- Prepaid card solution, giving you a mastercard that you can use instead of a credit card.
2. CCNow
3. PayPay
4. DirecPay – PayPal Alternative in India
5. AlertPay
6. Liberty Reserve
7. Strictpay
8. Perfectmoney
9. TrialPay – Ad funded Payment Platform used for social games on sites such as Facebook, and for software companies who can offer trials.

Bonus:I did and you should too.

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Written by rtcrooks

For some people, expressing tone and emotion in their writing is an arduous task. In an age where communication happens at lightening speed, text and instant messaging services have replaced more formal forms of communication. People have become more reliant on shortcuts that allow them to express tone and emotion more effectively. Emoticons, a portmanteau of the English words emotion (or emote) and icon, are the devil behind this unhealthy reliance. Emoticons provide a more straightforward, and simpler process for displaying emotions in writing – but without having to use words.

At some point in life, you are supposed to leave your childish ways behind, and grow into a real man or woman. There is nothing more depressing than watching someone desperately hanging on to their youth. With that said, why are grown men using emoticons? Wearing Converse high tops and talking about how great the new Arcade Fire album gets our seal of approval. Sending an email that reads, “Sorry your investment went belly up this quarter, :(…” does not. Take a hint old man, no one is going to give you a hard time for actually acting your age.

Emoticons Make You Look Like A Teeny Bopper On Myspace

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Are you in-between being a child and a teen? If you answer no to this question, there is no need for you to be using emoticons. “Tweens” are all the rage right now. Tween is the new marketing term used to define the demographic roughly between the ages of 8 and 14. They are easily identified as the demographic that goes to a Jonas Brother’s concert and begs their parents to buy them a $40 tour t-shirt, all while spending the entire concert screaming at the top of their lungs. According to Wikipedia, Tweens are the first “highly connected” generation. They were born into technology, and the first generation to have lifelong use of the internet, cell phones, etc. They interact with technology flawlessly; to them its invisible. They see electronic devices as an extension of themselves rather than a medium of communication. It’s almost as if emoticons were created just for them…not for you.

Laziness

/p>

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The internet may be the death of grammar among the youth today. Anyone with access to a computer can now start their own blog and unconsciously slaughter the English language. Language changes along with culture. A great example can be seen with the Hippie movement of the 60′s. Their everyday language was filled with expressions such as: Groovy, far out, happening, and dude. But does basic, good grammar really have to disappear from our society? Laziness is a stinky perfume, so spend an extra 30 seconds on your next forum post. Grown men (and women) should not become a catalyst for destroying proper sentence structure, or hitch a ride on the emoticon band wagon.

Emoticons = Bad Business Practice

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Bombarding clients and co-workers with playful emoticons at the end of e-mails is not what someone would call, “professional”. Alexis Feldman, the director of the Feldman Realty Group, a commercial real estate company in Manhattan, knows this all too well. More than once she has had a multimillion-dollar deal fall through. She says that she’ll get an e-mail that says, “Sorry, my client is not interested in the space, too bad we couldn’t make the big bucks” with a frown face at the end of it! Sending off a “tough break” e-mail with a frown face emoticon at the end of it does not make someone feel better about losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, in fact it makes you look like a bona fide jerk.

They Alter The Reader’s Perception

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When trying to convey a message to another person or audience, there are certain ways to gain credibility. Using emoticons is not one of them. Good grammar, research with credible sources, style, and organization are the arenas that writers should be worried about. Not emoticons of a bunny ( /), or animations of a devilish smiley face. Emoticons add too much playfulness to allow for the author to be taken seriously. But grown men want to be taken seriously, unless they want to date 22 yr old’s who just want to party; for the rest of their life. And if that’s you’re predicament, you’re most likely dealing with much bigger issues than using emoticons.

They’re Meant To Be Used Ironically

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The first person documented to have used the emoticons ” :-) ” and ” :-( ” with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman. Fahlman is a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, and his work has been dedicated to the cascade correlation algorithm, the Dylan programming language, and Common Lisp (We don’t expect you to know what any of this computer jargon specifically relates to. Just know that one day it will lead to artificial intelligence) His original message from 1982 appears below:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)

From: Scott E Fahlman

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark

things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:

:-(

Wall Street

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Do you want the people handling your investment nest egg using emoticons when they e-mail you about your portfolio?

“We know its been a tough year, but you only lost $15,000 this year : ) Some people lost $35,000 : ( ”

There is something about this type of correspondence that doesn’t sit well with us. Maybe because they’re poking fun at the fact we lost $15,000, and will not be able to send our 18yr old to college this fall. Needless to say, Wall Street and emoticons do not correlate into a winning relationship.

They’re Superfluous Expressions That Highlight Poor Language Skills

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If you ever want to be considered a praiseworthy writer, then you need to hone and craft your writing skills. If your words sound harsh when delivered without a wink or a smile, then you need to take an English 101 refresher course at your local community college. If you cannot convey to other internet users — with your words — whether or not your point was friendly or humorous, then take an English 201 course. If you cannot express your point without fancy animated punching smileys or figures that represent Sadaam Hussein, then take an English 301 course. If that still doesn’t work, then just do us all a favor and just give up your writing career.

They Undermine Your Credibility As An Authority Figure

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You cruise into the office one morning, sit down at your computer to check your e-mail, and BLAMMO! You instantly realize you forgot to attach a time sensitive document to an e-mail you sent the night before. You suddenly get sick to your stomach. Your boss is going to thrust your neck into a guillotine for this blunder. When you finally work up the nerve to check your inbox you start dying laughing; here is the message from your boss:

“Hi Peter, what were you thinking? :( That document needed to be sent out last night so that our New York office could get started on the project first thing this morning. The East coast guys are so >:( with you right now! You really let us down on this one

Are you really going to take your boss seriously after getting an e-mail like this? We didn’t think so.

Bonus: Mario & Luigi spotted in real life