A recent CNN Money article offered alternatives for e-commerce business owners that are “sick of PayPal”. Service descriptions from the article and the vendor websites were revealing, and not in a good way:

• Digital River charges a $1 fee per transaction, more than 3 times PayPal’s transaction fee
• 2Checkout.com charges a setup fee (PayPal doesn’t), has a commission fee almost twice PayPal’s, and always holds 5% of your sales in reserve
• AlertPay charges a fee to transfer funds to your bank (PayPal does this for free), and charges 25% more than PayPal to cut you a check.
• TrialPay undermines your product’s value by optionally making it a free bonus for some other vendor. You get paid by the other vendor, but at what cost to you in the long run?
• And while e-Junkie is a stellar shopping cart, why is it listed in the article among the payment processors?

Seriously? Those payment processors may be options for folks who are sick of PayPal, but I would have to be fatally furious to trade PayPal in for someone who charged higher fees and higher commissions, held onto my money, or charged fees whether the funds were coming or going.

I’ve got nothing but love for PayPal, because:

• I have instant access to my money
  If someone pays me at 12:35pm, I can spend that money at 12:36pm. No waiting for a monthly payment, like with TrialPay. PayPal could and would (and should) hold the funds if they felt the transaction was high-risk or atypical, but they don’t hold a portion of my earnings by default.
• It’s easy and free to withdraw funds
  Did you know PayPal offers a debit card? And there are no transaction fees when used for purchases. Also, they’ll deposit funds into any of my bank accounts for free, as often as I like. Again, no waiting for a monthly payment.
• Their commissions are the lowest I’ve seen
  And their commission decreases as your sales volume increases.
• No setup or monthly fees for standard accounts
  Only the higher-end business accounts charge a monthly fee, and the features are well worth the $30 per month. Only the Payflow Gateway accounts charge a setup fee.
• It has 164 million accounts worldwide
  If I could only convince each account holder to give me $1…or a Euro…or a British Pound (PayPal supports transactions in 17 currencies)
• I have options
  There are 138 compatible shopping cart applications to choose from.
• It will endure
  Banks collapse and regimes fail, but PayPal belongs to eBay…and eBay is (probably) forever.

Et tu? What payment processor do you use to buy and sell online?