While PayPal is definitely one of the most trusted payment methods available online today there are a lot of alternatives available. So, if you’re looking for ways other than PayPal to accept payment for your freelancing work keep reading.
Before I talk about the features of the payment processors available to you, let’s talk about what you really want to know about: fees.
Payoneer
Payoneer has quickly become a very wide spread way of sending and receiving money online. The great thing about their service is that the money is available via a VISA credit card issued by the company. Just any other VISA card, the Payoneer card can be used at any point-of-sale (POS) system or business that accepts VISA.
The receiver (you) has a pre-paid credit card service, while the sender’s account is connected to an email address and bank account. Payments are instantaneous on the side of the sender and are available to the receiver within 48 hours.
Google Wallet
Another way of receiving or sending a payment online that has become more prominent, but is still a smaller competitor to PayPal in terms of availability, is Google Wallet. What is interesting about it is that it has features that are specific to smart phones including NFC. You can use your smartphone to process payments just as you would with a regular card reader.
Also, the online interface is very well put together and you can use the service for many services you’re purchasing online. The set-up is free of charge and bank transfers are also free of charge. Within the US, Google wallet also works as a peer to peer money transfer
Stripe
This service is available specific parts of world, but is beginning to receive wide-spread acceptance. It’s only a matter of time before it will be available everywhere. Stripe is currently only available in US, UK, Canada and Ireland.
The advantage is that the API is built to be able to handle all credit cards, the most widely used – VISA, MasterCard, etc.
The one issue with it that might not be a deal breaker to coders is that it is not as immediately useable, but the major advantage is that there are specific WordPress plugins specifically designed for it. With a 2.9% charge of all transactions plus a flat 30 cents, it might not be the cheapest, but it’s fast and reliable.
Square
Square is an up and coming service that aims to revolutionize point of sale (POS) systems. They accept all major credit cards.
Square offers a square-shaped gadget to plug into the audio jack of your smart phone (works with iPhone and Android), as well as a stand that will turn your iPad into a POS.
Selz
Selz has been produced for bloggers, online retailers and anyone looking to sell digital products or services. This payment processor can be easily integrated within WordPress and the Selz eCommerce plugin is very easy to use.
The platform will handle credit card payments and it provides a number of additional features that are helpful in selling digital downloads.
Selz is far more than just a payment processor, it can also integrate with mailing lists in MailChimp and Aweber. In addition, a customer doesn’t need to leave your website to complete a purchase, which makes the process more user friendly and can boost conversions.
They charge a 5 percent fee per transaction plus 25 cents flat, which is in the higher end.
Gumroad
This is one of the easiest payment processors to set up. The time between creating your account, creating your product in Gumroad and accepting Credit Card payment can literally be 10 minutes.
I used Gumroad when my default payment process (PayPal) stopped working for an unknown reason. Within 10 minutes I was accepting payment via Gumroad.
They put an emphasis on user experience, so paying and getting the product (if it’s a digital download) is very easy. Instead of requesting a lot of personal information on check out (address, phone number, etc) all Gumroad needs to process a payment is a name, email address and credit card information. Quick and painless.
So, as you can see, there a bunch of options other than PayPal. As of this writing, Apple just introduced Apple Pay, but it’s not widely available yet, so it didn’t make the list above. If you are interested in finding a great payment processor other than PayPal I encourage you to research the alternatives I’ve listed above.
2 thoughts on “6 PayPal Alternatives for Freelancers to Collect Payments in WordPress”
It is good to remind about Paypal alternatives sometimes. It seems, that most of the people, who are moving money online, only know Paypal. There are more flexible and cost effective options, which, I hope, will be growing their popularity and become equal competitors to Paypal soon.
Well put Hoggan. PayPal was able to leverage the popularity of eBay to become a household name. Unfortunately, none of PayPal’s competitors (except for the now defunct Google Wallet or maybe Apple Pay in the future) have that sort of support. It will be a long uphill battle, but I think the smaller PayPal alternatives will gain traction because, as you pointed out, some of them are much easier and more cost effective than PayPal.