PayPal or not PayPal
EDIT: The message referred to in this post has been removed. Please see the last post in this thread for clarification on which type of PayPal account can accept payments without the buyer requiring a PayPal account of their own.
Hi I'm having real trouble figuring out what this means on the payment page:
......................................
Important Notice
You do not need a PayPal account to pay. Click 'Pay Now' above,
then on the PayPal page follow the small 'continue' link hidden in
the small print. It looks like this:
......................................
I cannot find any reference to the 'continue' link on the PayPal page - can you help? What happens when a user clicks the 'continue' link anyway, are they taken to other payment options? This area seems a little too confusing for me to feel confident in opting to use this service for our bookings - though everything else is superbly straightforward and I'm very keen to see if it can work for us.
Regards
Martin
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Support Staff 2 Posted by Jo Potts on 06 Aug, 2009 11:29 AM
Martin,
The 'Important Notice' message is there to try to clear up some confusion that some attendees/delegates have had in the past. People sometimes don't want to create themselves a paypal account and so are reluctant to pay.
The initial paypal payment page seems to have been designed by paypal to persuade people to sign up for a new account before making a payment. However, there is a (not so obvious) option to simply pay without signing up first - that's done by following the small 'continue' link just above the list of card types on that page. This is what the message on bookwhen refers to.
It's in the following text: "Don't have a PayPal account? Use your credit card or bank account (where available). Continue"
To answer the second part of you question, when someone clicks on the continue link, it takes them to a standard pay with credit card payment page.
Do you think it would be better to simply remove the 'Important Notice' message?
On a slightly different topic, payments are currently not mandatory. This is to leave the option to collect payments 'on the door'. Mandatory payments and payments via google checkout are planned for future releases.
3 Posted by m.grimes on 10 Aug, 2009 08:51 AM
Thanks for the feedback Jo. However, I still cannot find the link on the PayPal page - are we speaking about the same page? Please see attached screengrab for details of the page I see.
Regards
Martin
Support Staff 4 Posted by Jo Potts on 10 Aug, 2009 09:17 AM
Sorry for this confusion. Paypal is not transparent!
I've finally worked out what the problem is. Paypal only allows payments without the creation of an account if your paypal merchant account is a paypal 'website payments pro' account (£20/month). They do not make this obvious at all.
So, the message in bookwhen makes no sense! Sorry again. I will remove the message to avoid further confusion.
I've attached two screenshots to show you what I thought happens for everyone. The paypal_landing_page shows the first page I see (with the tiny continue button), and the paypal_card_pay shows the next page after clicking continue.
Thank you for highlighting this issue!
5 Posted by m.grimes on 10 Aug, 2009 09:38 AM
Hi Jo
So, what can we do to get pointed to the right PayPal page! Is there something we're doing wrong?
Regards
Martin
Support Staff 6 Posted by Jo Potts on 10 Aug, 2009 09:50 AM
Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of PayPal. The page that you get taken to after clicking 'Pay Now' is out of our control. You're not doing anything wrong at all.
Re-read my message above. I've edited it so you may have read the older version. The bottom line is that, if you have a 'standard' PayPal account, then anyone making a payment will have to sign up to PayPal. If you have a Paypal 'payments pro' account then people can make payments without creating an account (see my screenshots).
We have plans to allow payments through other payment gateways in the future, but until then, PayPal is the only option.
Thank you for your patience with this! Do you have another payment gateway preference? Worldpay or Sage pay perhaps?
7 Posted by james on 20 Jan, 2010 12:01 PM
Hi
We are considering your system for a client's site and was surprised to read this thread.
Paypal's screens are confusing but you dont need an account with them to pay by credit card (see https://www.paypal-business.co.uk/website-payments-standard.asp - it states this on the right hand side)
So anyone concerned about this needn't be as the free account they offer (the standard option) should still be adequate for the job at hand :)
cheers
James
Support Staff 8 Posted by Jo Potts on 20 Jan, 2010 12:53 PM
Hi James. Thanks for re-raising this issue! Finally I've worked it out...
PayPal Business accounts (Standard & Pro) can accept payments without the buyer having a PayPal account. The buyer has to spot the tiny continue link however. See the paypal_landing_page screenshot above.
PayPal Personal accounts cannot. The buyer will see 'Sign up for a PayPal account and continue checkout' where the card logos and continue link normally are. This must be the problem that m.grimes had.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Cheers, Jo.
Jo Potts closed this discussion on 20 Jan, 2010 12:53 PM.