Comments on: PayPal Should Go Undercover

By: Jaume Barberena

Jaume Barberena — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:17:52 +0000

Charlie,
PayPal Pro is here https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overview-outside
But beware you will have heavy security compliance requirements, much like you would have with most paymanet gateway/mechant account solutions, so you are sacrificing one of the great advantages of PayPal, namely that they take care of all the security

By: Charlie

Charlie — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:43:55 +0000

Doug, a link to such Pro service would be highly appreciated. I couldn’t find such thing…
Thanks in advance

By: doug

doug — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:42:07 +0000

There are more than one version class with Paypal.. the basic is a round trip through their website, but the Pro version allows you to fully embed the flow.

By: zen garden

zen garden — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:06:23 +0000

I’m sick of Ebay and Paypal altogether. If Ebay didn’t try to compete with Amazon (stupid move), then Amazon would accept Paypal, but since it doesn’t – Amazon is my favorite place to shop – it makes having extra money in a Paypal account an annoyance.

By: Lidia

Lidia — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:09:27 +0000

Well paypal may be the most popular solution but it's also the most vulnerable PayPal Phishing Scam

By: florida marketing company

florida marketing company — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:11:47 +0000

I think paypal spends too much time trying to force paypal down everyone’s throat. If they spent more time making their checkout process more customizable and/or more pretty, I think it would benefit them.

By: Robert Gorell

Robert Gorell — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:42:43 +0000

Thanks, Charlie! If PayPal does end up doing this, they’ll be happy to know that both John and I accept PayPal.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:37:21 +0000

Robert,
You are just right! a PayPal little widget would make the life of the programmers/merchants/customers much easier, and will of course benefit PayPal themselves.

By: Robert Gorell

Robert Gorell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:25:41 +0000

John’s last point is exactly why PayPal should do the AJAX lightbox development themselves. If they had a minimal-looking custom widget that only required a login and didn’t take you off the page, there would be much more incentive to actually create a PayPal account in the first place.

Besides, if you were buying multiple items from the same site, it seems you could pay one-click-at-a-time without having to sign in again — and the merchant would neither have nor need access to your personal records to process the transaction, since it would be PayPal’s widget.

This sounds like an obvious win for both PayPal and participating merchants.

By: John Quarto-vonTivadar

John Quarto-vonTivadar — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:13:11 +0000

I’m not sure about that, Charlie. I’m seeing the webmaster at the merchant site have to install the JS to do the lightbox popup but the source for the popup to be driven by a call to PayPal and ditto with the form submission via AJAX. So tht part of the traffic is directly between customer and PayPal.

I don’t even mind if PayPal branded it well as long as the multi-steps all occured behind the scenes so that the use of PayPal was more seemless

And, when it comes to security, it’s Paypal that has to reassure customers that offering this sort of solution to a vendor is secure, that the vendor never has access to the customer PayPal account.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:08:59 +0000

Would anyone of us like the fact that webmasters have access to our PayPal account? since this will be done by Ajax it means that this will be done on the merchants website and the webmasters will be able to login to our PayPal account.

Scary, no?

By: Search Engine Optimization Journal

Search Engine Optimization Journal — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:15:53 +0000

We think the idea is brilliant however from a branding perspective on Paypal’s end, it should be “semi-undercover”. The whole checkout process fully taking you to their site is unnecessary as it is a distraction from the buying experience, but if they could somehow leave the Paypal sign at the bottom and keep the user on the page, that would be simply fantastic for both parties.

By: Audio Bible

Audio Bible — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 10:29:24 +0000

Ben, I viewed the demo on the link you gave, https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overview-outside this is exactly how I do it now, but I still think it is a bit confusing for the customer.

I just wish there was a smoother way………….

By: aakriti

aakriti — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 09:57:22 +0000

I completely. We have taken off Paypal from our company’s e-comm site 2 yrs. back as we found it confused the user more than helping him/her pay.

Ben, I did go through the link you sent, but not all users have Paypal a/c, and without changing the UI too much, it is difficult to make an unsuspecting user understand the difference.

Thanks.

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:10:34 +0000

Here is the link:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overview-outside

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:04:09 +0000

I’m pretty sure you can integrate Paypal into your site without even going to their site. Look under their developer API.

By: The Merchant Account Blog » Paypal buyers no longer need a Paypal account

The Merchant Account Blog » Paypal buyers no longer need a Paypal account — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:52:28 +0000

[...] a usability perspective this makes perfect sense, and has been one of the biggest hurdles for Paypal to overcome as a 3rd part [...]

By: Jestep

Jestep — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:36:11 +0000

From a usability perspective it makes a lot of sense. But looking at the situation from Paypal’s business model, and the damage they could do to their already shaky customer support, I can’t see this being a well planned change.

By: Audio Bible

Audio Bible — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:03:11 +0000

I accept PayPal, and besides adding your logo to their checkout process, that is about all the customizing you can do.

Right now, I want to add Google checkout as a payment option, but here again, I have NOT seen a smooth way of incorporating it into the site checkout process. I saw one site with 3 different buttons to leave the shopping cart page, one to their own checkout page, another PayPal button to theirs and a 3rd Google checkout button to theirs. I was a bit confused at first with all of this. I can imagine John R. Customer would be even more confused.

If there is a smoother way of doing this, I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR IT… or see an example of……

Thanks.

By: Nermin Hadzikadunic

Nermin Hadzikadunic — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:21:29 +0000

I so agree with you. You would think buy and specially size of Paypal that whole process would be one click process but for some reason they still have some functionality from 90’s.

I wonder if they are doing it from branding/exposure point of view in order to justify certain things.

Who knows? Even though I see your point and I agree that change needs to happen I use it often and like it

Nermin