This story about “PayPal screwing over a Mac indie business”:blog.apparentsoft.com/business/… should be a real concern to anyone relying on PayPal. These kind of things come up from time to time, often with frozen accounts because too much money was suddenly flowing into or out of an account, but I’ve always stuck with PayPal because they have low rates and I haven’t run into any problems. There’s nothing fancy about the way I sell “my products”:www.riverfold.com/, but it works, and I hate to change things that aren’t broken.
As a user, I’ve gone from avoiding PayPal to preferring it. I’m less likely to use a credit card with online shops that I’ve never heard of before (although more because of the hassle of entering all my information than for any security concerns). It’s also convenient for me to have small expenses like hosting and software purchases all in one place under my PayPal account.
But it’s time to get serious about this, so I’ve decided to use “FastSpring”:www.fastspring.com as a backup. I like FastSpring’s admin interface, testing mode, templates, and focus on customer support. I’m impressed with the “Atebits custom store”:sites.fastspring.com/atebits/i… hosted on FastSpring, and the “reasons Justin Williams chose for switching”:carpeaqua.com/2009/11/0… The fees are a little high for everyday use (8.9% vs. PayPal’s 3.9%), but it’s perfect as a secondary payment processor, waiting for me to flip the switch if anything goes wrong with my PayPal account.
