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With over 173m active accounts in 203 countries around the world and over 1m registered accounts in South Africa, PayPal is an essential payments partner for businesses. By providing faster, easier and more secure ways to pay and get paid online, PayPal is powering e-commerce around the world.
PayPal is ideal for online purchases of products and services. Skype and thousands of other sites around the world, including e-commerce websites, hotels and lodges, online media agencies, service providers and arts and crafts businesses accept PayPal payments.
The system is also very useful for offline transactions. Businesses don't have to wait for cheques to arrive in the mail or take card details over the phone anymore. Using PayPal for offline payments, businesses can request payments from their customers in a matter of minutes via email directly or by easily creating an invoice from their PayPal account and then sending it to their customer's email address.
In turn, customers can conveniently complete the payment without having to share their financial information with the seller. They simply click on the PayPal button embedded in the electronic invoice they receive and can confirm the payment to be debited from their PayPal balance or the card linked to their PayPal account. This way customer data is not compromised.
The seller is almost immediately notified of the payment and their PayPal account balance will be indicated.
To settle the funds, South African businesses have the ability to withdraw the payment and transfer it to their bank account via the PayPal FNB withdraw service (available for customers of all SA banks).
It is free for businesses to open a PayPal account, there are no set-up fees or monthly costs and fees are charged on successful transactions only.
There is complete transparency in pricing and no hidden fees. A standard rate is applied for receiving payments for goods and services. Discounted rates are offered when businesses sell above a certain volume.
A PayPal account holder can accept and hold balance in up to 26 different currencies − this makes PayPal is especially beneficial for cross-border purchases and businesses in the tourism and hospitality sector that need this particular flexibility as they host customers from a variety of countries.
Artisans and craft merchants wanting to adopt an e-commerce platform can get up and running easily using PayPal services for payments.
An example of such business is Justelephant.com, which offers bespoke, handcrafted African elephant hair bracelets to a worldwide market from its base in South Africa. “PayPal is so well known in USA and Europe, it is trusted much more than any other online payment system. Because of this people are much more inclined to pay online,” says Neale Cary-Smith, founder of Justelephant.com.
Have questions? Contact PayPal.
