PayPal, Skrill and ProPay - how much will they charge you on eBay?
Anyone can transact on eBay - buy, sell, ship, return, bid and process payments. Because eBay understands everybody’s preference when it comes to payment methods, eBay welcomes many payment solutions provider to place their logos on their ecommerce site. In other words, eBay’s objective is for shoppers, traders, brokers, and investors pay each other free of hassles as much as possible.
eBay has detailed guidelines for sellers on how to setup their preferred payment methods. Since sellers also need to pay eBay (ex. seller fees), eBay also ensures that during account registration, seller will automatically nominate a payment processor. Usually, eBay promotes PayPal.
If eBay is making the checkout process simple on their site, are those payment solutions company also doing the same thing?
Well, in the first place, it is you (as a seller) who directly deals with them, not eBay. Say you choose PayPal as your payment method as you find it more convenient, you must make an arrangement with PayPal in such a way that the money (paid to you by buyers) will smoothly go into your account. If PayPal charges you beyond standard transaction fees, then you have to settle that issue with PayPal yourself. eBay is completely out of the equation.
Since not all clients of eBay fully understand how those payment solutions work, I would like to guide them a bit on that particular matter. On my count, there are over ten payment methods available at eBay. I will discuss three of them.
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Signing up an account with PayPal only takes a few steps. For you to get going in eBay, you have to add your credit or debit card and bank accounts on PayPal. PayPal will automatically charge your credit card whenever you initiate a payment transaction. When you accept payments, PayPal will automatically credit the amount to your account.
PayPal processes payments for online purchases and personal transactions. For online purchases (ex. shopping, ticket booking), paying the merchant is free of charge. Getting paid (ex. at eBay) will have a transaction fee of 2.4% to 3.4% + $0.30 USD.
For personal payments, both sending and receiving money will have a corresponding transaction fee of 3.4% + $0.30 USD.
If you own an eBay store, you can integrate PayPal (with PayPal REST and Classic APIs) into your website. If you want to bill your client, you can use PayPal Email Payments to do it. PayPal also offers fraud protection services with PayFlow Payment Gateway.
Skrill
Skrill meets the highest standards in online security - the Payments Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS Level 1). With Skrill, you can send money for a fee of 1% of the total amount. You can receive money (ex. from your eBay customer) free of charge but withdrawing funds from Skrill will have $4.99 charge. You can upload funds on Skrill from your Visa and Master Card accounts for a fee of 1.9% of the total amount.
Outside eBay, you can partner with Skrill by making it as a payment processor on your ecommerce website.
ProPay
When you sign up with ProPay for an eAuction account, you will be directed to your eBay account and you will be asked to log-in. ProPay will then request your permission to grant them an access to your eBay account to determine what rates you are going to pay as a seller.
That is, for eBay powersellers, ProPay will charge you with 2.4% to 3.1% + $0.30 for every payment made by an eBay buyer towards you.
When your buyer selects ProPay on check out, they will be prompted to enter their credit card information. Payment will be processed immediately and sent to your ProPay account. ProPay will automatically charge you with 2.4% of the total amount for that transaction.
If you will notice, these payment processors have varying charge rates and methods. Your decision of whether to use them as your payment method in eBay is still a matter of convenience. You can ask other eBay sellers or even buyers about their experience with these providers. You can also conduct in-depth research on the quality of service of these providers both local and international. This is important especially when big amount of money will be involved on your future eBay transactions.
