Paypal is a well-known name in the world of the Internet. If you have bought something online or are selling something online, then Paypal is one payment portal that you might have seen on every website. But with time, we actually see its drawbacks, and in many cases, it doesn’t integrate well.
As a result, today, we are going to discuss some of the best Paypal alternatives which you can use for your business’s payment gateway. To make it easier for your customer to pay for the products that you sell without having to worry about the security of their card details.
Top 10 Paypal Alternatives
Table of Contents
1 Skrill
Starting our list with the best of the best, we have Skrill which is one of the most popular gateways which makes it possible for businesses to serve their customers efficiently. Skrill developers know the need of the modern-day business and understand how important it is to facilitate customers properly. Especially when it comes to money transactions and processing. Skrill is a direct competitor of Payal, and believe it not, and these two online payment portals have a long history of being the only competitors of their market. Skrill was founded in the year 2001, three years after Paypal was formed. The company Skrill has quickly become a trusted name when it comes to money processing and transfer services.
Features
- Skrill makes the money payment a piece of cake for newcomers. One can use several options like cash, credit cards, and even email transactions.
- A user can sign up on their web portal and, from one dashboard, access all the services that the company has to offer.
- Passwords and critical information are kept hidden by multiple layers of encryption to prevent misuse in any way possible.
- Each transaction is monitored by Skrills’s anti-fraud screening feature.
- Skrill also makes it possible for users to take out the cash money from the ATM using their Skrill account.
- One can use this application for free or pay a low price based on the type of transactions they do.
On the other hand, one thing you need to keep in mind if you have created an account on Skrill and for some reason, you are inactive on the platform. Then you have to pay three euros each month as an inactive fee.
2 Stripe
If you are an online business, then Stripe could help you sort out your payment processing. It does require a bit of developer experience, but with the inexpensive usage, one doesn’t have to worry about building their own e-commerce environment with Stripe’s API. Online credit payments have the standard price. The most significant advantage of Stripe’s free API is its simplicity to work with. As a result, even a small company with a small development team can truly integrate Stripe’s functionality into their e-commerce website. For the same kind of service, Payal charges an extra monthly fee from users.
Features
- First, Stripe accepts all the major debit and credit cards along with local payment methods.
- The business user will be able to make quick payments by using Stipe elements which auto-fills required information for the user.
- It comes with robust customer authentication.
- The API works well with Apple pay, Google Pay, and other well-known payment request APIs.
- Likewise, the payment gateway uses Stipe Radar and 3D secure for the prevention and the detection of fraud payments.
- Moreover, the API allows developers to integrate the mobile customer interface to make payment gateways optimized.
In addition to all these features, companies that are making more than $80,000 monthly get a discount on the credit fee. Lastly, it has multi-currency payouts, so if you are shipping products internationally. Your customer can make the payment in his currency, and the payment will be transferred to you in your currency.
One thing we like to bring to your notice is that with each international payment, Stripe adds 1% of the extra additional fee over all the other fees which you are already paying per transaction.
3 Payoneer
Payoneer was founded in the year 2005, and online payment transfer is its primary specialization. Right now, Payoneer has more than four million users who are spread across 200 countries. With Payoneer, a user is able to make cross-border money transfers in more than 150 countries, including India, Japan, the US, Canada, England, etc. Even Amazon, Airbnb, Google uses their payment gateway to receive online payments.
Payoneer has a strong focus on making it easier for their users to process international payments. One thing we want you to steer clear from, Payoneer doesn’t allow users to have a merchant account. Also, Payoneer doesn’t work as a payment service provider (PSP) such as Square and Stripe. The core functionality resides in facilitating users to transfer funds from one party to the other.
Features
- As a user, you get a monthly fee structure, and there’s no extra fee for early termination.
- In case your customer has a Payoneer account, then the transaction is completely free of charge.
- Payoneer is said to do wonders for freelancers and international business owners.
- It allows both single and mass payout options to its users along with an integrated payment system.
- Lastly, some other features include escrow payments, partner networks, and multi-currency support.
Moreover, if you are using Payoneer, you will have to pay an annual subscription cost which is $29.95. Also, in comparison to others, Payoneer has an expensive online credit card transaction fee from the average
4 Shopify Payments
For a lot of users, there’s no difference between Stripe and Shopify payments. Shopify Payments is a separate project explicitly developed for Shopify merchants. It allows customers to quickly activate their choice of payment method when making payment at the checkout. In simpler terms, Shopify payment is a native payment gateway for the website. Now you might be confused as to what is the difference between this and Shopify pay or shop pay? Well, Shopify payment is the merchant’s side of portal technicalities and plugins. While Shopify pay or Shop pay is the customer’s side “buy button” on the screen.
Features
- No need for logging in to another account; a single account and website are enough to manage everything.
- The gateway is designed for the platform and by the platform, so its integration makes the lives of both customers and merchants much easier.
- No extra fee for using this payment gateway for your online business.
- Besides, customers get multiple payment options, including Google pay and even EMI options, to complete the transaction.
- With the use of Shopify payment, a business owner can localize the pricing of the products for their overseas buyers.
- Lastly, it has a centralized dashboard that allows users to track their money in real-time.
Shopify partnered with Stripe in 2013 and developed an integrated payment solution for the website. Thus, eliminating the third-party integration all for once. On the other hand, it is a known fact that customers who are on Shopify prefer Shopify pay as their leading payment gateway. As a result, it is clear to have its merchant side implementation becoming necessary.
5 TransferWise/ Wise
TransferWise is known for its global reach along with competitive pricing. Its name has been changed since March 2021, and now it is called “Wise” only. The company is duly authorized and is regulated by FCA and HMRC from England. We did our extensive research and found out that Wise is managing an average of $70 billion funds transfers across 10 million customers across the globe. Also, it comes with a two-step verification to make sure that it’s the actual user, not the impersonator.
Features
- When it comes to opening an account, contacting customer support, and funding the transfers, all are easily accessible and can be done in just a few minutes.
- There are no complicated phrases or money transfer jargon that can confuse the user.
- All the exchange rates and the fee breakdowns are quite clearly mentioned in the form of a table.
- Moreover, the transfer fees are exceptionally low, making it easier for users to transfer smaller amounts overseas.
- The account can manage multiple currencies at the same time, along with providing its services to individuals as well as businesses.
- It is wholeheartedly loved by its customers and businesses.
There are tons of benefits and features which are provided by Wise, but it does come with a few disadvantages, as users can only pay by bank transfer, debit card, and credit card. There’s no way to pay via cheque or cash. It supports a lot of currencies, but still, there are quite a few which are missing from the list.
6 Square
Square is known for being the best mobile credit card processing company, but it does offer other services for brick-and-mortar and a payment system for online businesses as well. The website has a complete point-of-sale (POS) feature along with augmented add-on services which can be customized depending on the need of the company. This makes it easier for a business owner to scale up the work as the business grows. Moreover, the application developed by Square can be installed on both iOS and Android devices.
Features
- First, the pricing model of Square is pretty simple, and it does come with all flare rates. Also, there are no monthly fees.
- There’s an agreement form that the user needs to fill before making an account on the application. As a result, there’s no contract to sign up and pay the penalty when you are not using the service.
- Also, the user needs to pay only the processing cost.
- Easy to sign up quickly as there are no credit checks and no submission of documents required.
- A business can set up discounts, taxes and even issue refunds straight from the Square.
- It comes with an integrated feature of creating sales data and reports.
On the other hand, if you want to have a custom rate, your business needs to be processing more than $250,000 annually. In addition to this condition, the average ticket sales need to be more than $15. This condition puts Square at a disadvantage to other Paypal alternatives that we have on the list.
7 Bitcoin Payment
There’s no hiding the fact that people now want to make payments in crypto, and the most famous digital currency is Bitcoin. Yes, it still hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, but being able to accept Bitcoin as the payment method can open your business to a whole new untouched market, which is waiting for businesses like yours to accept the digital currency as a payment method.
Features
- Bitcoin doesn’t allow users to make a payment reversal or chargeback. A customer gets to pay you the money from their wallet. The payments are one-way transactions, so there’s no way a chargeback is available.
- As a merchant, you get to decide how much the transaction fee is. If you need money instantly, you need better network speed, and for that, you need to ask for a higher transaction fee. But still, it is much less than some other payment methods.
- Security is a significant feature with Bitcoin as it uses blockchain technology to transfer money, your money is completely secure, and the information of the transaction only stays with you and the customer.
The only issue with Bitcoin is its volatile nature, it can dip to thousands of dollars in a single day, so for many individuals, this seems like a huge risk as you might end up getting less than the desired amount on the price tag of your product.
8 Quickbooks
Quickbooks is said to be quite powerful software in the business software market. It saves both the money and the time of the business owner. In addition to this, a lot of businesses are already familiar with the working of Quickbooks, so when they are looking for a payment method, Quickbooks always gets the first preference.
Features
- Convenience is the first thing that attracts users to join Quickbooks. As we know, Quickbooks is the most widely used business accounting system. When a user starts accepting payment from Quickbooks, the complete payment and accounting process becomes streamlined.
- The software automatically matches up the payment from the customers to the invoices.
- With the use of Quickbooks, there will be no more notion of using multiple software to manage accounting and payments.
- Humans are a creature of habit, and many businesses are already familiar with its working. Thus, getting on board with its payment gateway is really easy for them.
- A user can generate their own financial report whenever they want. The information comprises year-over-year income, expenditure, trends, and forecasting documents.
- The developers have created the software in such a way that it is easy to navigate from one page to the other.
- Everything is neatly aligned, and the user can get to the necessary information quickly. For a newcomer, the company also offers virtual orientation practice to make them familiar with the product.
- Most of the functionalities can be initialized by using a single mouse click.
One issue that we found in Quickbooks is the high processing fee which could go up to 3.4% in case the customer is paying via keyed credit cards. Thus, a business is left with only two options: either ask their customers to pay the processing fee or pay it by themselves. This processing fee requirement can have a significant impact on your profits.
9 2Checkout
Now we are at the end of our Paypal alternatives list, but still, we have some great alternatives set to be explored for you. The 2Checkout is the payment portal that is designed for WooCommerce websites that allow merchants and business owners to accept credit card payments via their portal. There are no hidden fees that the company doesn’t inform you about on their homepage, and you can find all the different fee structures which the company is providing to its users.
Features
- The implementation process doesn’t take much time as the API works on Python, JAVA, Ruby, PHP, .NET, and cURL. Even the open-source carts which are not developed on Woocommerce can use it for their payment gateway.
- Websites developed on Magento and WordPress had no problem running the 2Checkout plugin.
- The pricing of the payment process depends on the home country of the business owner. A user needs to pay the company for each successful transaction, no extra cost, and fees.
- The company has deployed more than 300 fraud rules on its payment gateway. This results in the coverage of all the basic security features that the user is seeking.
- 2Checkout is PCI 1 certified, which is the top-of-the-line certification for any online software provider.
- The mobile-optimized checkout process is also there, so website owners don’t have to worry about finding the other gateway for their mobile users.
- There are a total of 87 currencies, 15 languages, and 211 countries are supported by the software.
As you can use 2Checkout has a number of benefits, and in a number of cases, it becomes a great first choice for the companies which are dealing in the money transfer of just a few thousand dollars each month. Lastly, the software is newcomer friendly and will help new businesses to accept online payment without asking for too much as a transaction fee.
10 Google Wallet/ Google Pay
Google Wallet is the last on our list, which acts as a virtual wallet for both customers and business owners. All the information of the user is safe in Google’s system rather than the user’s device. As a result, all the transactions which take place on this platform take place from Google’s server. Google wallet is becoming more and more popular each day, and a number of online businesses are using it as one of their payment gateway methods.
Features
- It comes with a 4 digit pin which keeps the authorization secure to only the Google account holder. There are multiple layers of passwords that work with the application to make sure that each transaction is entirely end-to-end and safe.
- In the event you have lost your mobile phone, you can easily disable the Google wallet remotely. The card which you have provided in the Google wallet will still work just fine.
- Google’s secure server keeps the information of added credit cards and debit cards safe.
- The card which the customer is using is kept hidden from the other party. As a result, when a card does come on the screen of the user, it does not have the full credentials written on it.
Google Wallet is a great software that can also provide you with a QR code that your customers can scan and make the payment. It is a robust payment gateway, but still, its working is pretty simple. The implementation takes less than 5 minutes, and the payment portal or the link becomes live.
Conclusion
So these were some of the best alternatives for Paypal. You can find which one suits your requirements the most and use it as your payment gateway. It is necessary that you must go through all the fees documents and structures before making your final decision as some of them do come with a contract, and breaking it would cost you a penalty. As a result, we advise you to take your time and use their basic free version first and see if the user experience and the payment transactions have been up to the mark on it.
If we have to choose from the options from the above Paypal alternative list, then we will go with Skrill as our first choice due to its accessibility and functionality. It has time and time again replaced Paypal in a number of businesses, and it still offers all the features of Paypal in a much cost-effective way.
