Is This THE PayPal Alternative?

If you’ve read some of my earlier posts, you know that I’m one of the people generally having a love/hate relationship with PayPal. When I wrote that article last year, I had a bit of a higher tolerance for them. Nowadays, I don’t know…

Especially this time of year, the length of time it takes for that payment page to load just kills my conversion rate.

Just about every year, I see a few possible alternatives but I’m never satisfied. Some systems are easily cheated or have high rates of fraud. Merchant accounts are messy and have so many fees invloved that I’d have to jack up all my pricing just to cover processing costs.

Then there are the ones that are kind of like PayPal, like Clickbank or 2Checkout, but they aren’t suited to service-oriented businesses – and the majority of my high-end sales end in requests for additional consulting.

Every few months I go on a hunt for a resolution to this problem. I’m constantly looking for a solution with

• a reasonably priced start-up fee,
• professional looking order pages, that load fast
• tells me all the fees up-front
• doesn’t have the same restrictions on accepting credit cards that PayPal has
• won’t force me to offer affiliate programs if I don’t want them
• will let me customize my order page to look more like my site
• doesn’t require a bunch of technical hoo-hahs that I don’t know how to work.

I know. It seems like a lot to ask.

But I’m picky when it comes to something that is going to represent me and my company. I just hate getting letters from people that say “I really want your book but PayPal won’t take my card”.

(Not to pick on Clickbank or PayPal or even 2Checkout and Storm Pay. Not at all – but they do have their limitations.)

In my quest this year, I found Acceptiva. The service was really personal – I actually spoke to a real person on the phone.

Seriously, their number is right on the site.

The payments come through a lot faster than Clickbank too – instead of waiting a month to get a check for what you made last month, everything you make from the first half of the month is deposited on the 18th, and everything from the second half you get on the 3rd.

True, that’s not as fast as PayPal, which sometimes gives you your money instantly. But you also don’t have to worry about getting your account frozen or not being sure when funds will transfer into your account, either.

Your company is also what appears on the client’s credit card statement, which I like. I’ve only had one chargeback ever and it was through Paypal. The reason?

The person remembered that they had ordered from me, but was pretty new to the Net and didn’t get what the heck PayPal was.

It was reversed when the person realized that that’s how they ordered from me. But it was still a stressful experience to go through.

If you do blog or RSS consulting, or you sell web services, ebooks, etc, from your site, and you want better control over your payment acceptance process, Acceptiva might be right for you.

According to this press release you can get a discount signing up until next week. You have to sell either services or soft goods (like ebooks) and be based in the US, but they don’t do any credit checks – they just need your basic information and your EIN.

I know all this because I signed up yesterday. I’ll keep you posted with how it’s working out later on today and over the next month or so.

Hey lookit- I just got an email about it… I’ll come back and tell you a few reasons why co-branded payment pages help increase your conversion rate…

Tags: marketers :: consultant :: marketing :: Paypal :: ECommerce :: internet marketing