I wanted to use an alternative to PayPal, since some of my customers claimed that they needed to sign up for an account or got spam as a result of paying through PayPal. I signed up for the Intuit payment processing about a year ago in order to alleviate some of the concerns of my clients. However, with Intuit going to Quickbooks, it looks like the players in the free accounts with per-transaction fees has dwindled once again.

Ironically, I only signed up for Intuit because a scammer asked me to. Of course, I was new to the game and didn't know it was a scam at first. When I looked into the program, I was satisfied with the percentage Intuit wanted to take from me. I learned later that scammers asked for Intuit because PayPal was more diligent about security, meaning the scam was to use a stolen credit card, have me pass along cash, and then have Intuit come after me when the credit card payment was denied. Since I avoided the scam, I never had to deal with the situation in question, but that's probably one of the reasons it shut down. If the only people that prefer you over PayPal are old folks who are scared of a system that works and scammers, that's going to fail eventually.

Honestly, I like PayPal, and I hope I can use it for my main credit card accepting service. I don't really know the rate comparisons. It's a few dollars here and there, so I won't be moving to Chase or any of the other free services at this time, as long as I can make the PayPal system work for me. And the company just added a nice invoicing system, which is perfect for the clients I have who want paper or emailed invoices rather than online credit card bills. I'll still offer credit card payment, and I'll hope that PayPal allows folks to pay that way without signing up for an account, but I'm fine with emailing an invoice and waiting for a check, too. In fact, having just sent my last payment request from Intuit, they only allowed about two sentences and no invoice form option, so PayPal had them beat there, too.

It reminds me of when I was giving a speech at a recent seminar, and someone asked about what calendar to use, and I said that once Google decides it wants to do something well, there's little point in fighting it. Well, PayPal is kind of the Google of online payments for most of us small (very small) business owners, who just can't justify $5 to $50 a month service fees when half of our customers would rather pay cash or check, anyhow.

Please comment below if you've found a much better system, and I'll honestly try it out. Something like free and 2% transaction fee. That would help. Until I find it, however, I guess I'll stick with the best there is.