May 6, 2008
Has PayPal Passed the Tipping Point for “Normal” Consumers?
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
Back in the dinosaur days of the early ’00s when our organization first got into online sales in a really big way, PayPal still had a bit of an air of amateur about it. Sites that offered PayPal options were those who couldn’t get their own merchant accounts or afford a “real” online shopping cart. The fact that PayPal took the customer “away” from the purchasing website gave it a semi-seedy air. There was something suspicious about it, even if that sense was completely unwarranted.
Today, I wonder if PayPal has overcome those perceived shortcomings and if associations should be offering it as a payment option as a matter of course. It’s been big for a while for eBay and niche publishers, but has it become equally big for organizations who deal with more, shall we say, “normal” consumers of product?
Personally, I buy a lot of products online — not just the usual stuff from Amazon, but various software and books from other sites. Lately I have noticed that if there is a PayPal option for payment I immediately select it. Why? Because it’s a lot easier to remember my PayPal password than it is to fish a credit card out of my wallet and then type the number and info into the order form. And I now have a level of comfort and trust with the security of the PayPal system.
I’ve had the PayPal account for a long time, but almost never used it until the past year or so. Now it’s my payment option of choice. Am I unusual? Did PayPal pass the tipping point a long time ago and I just missed it? Or does PayPal still suggest small, micro, less-than-credible?
I too am a fan of paypal. My tenant(s) pay me via paypal. It’s great.
Years ago when paypal first came on the scene and before we had the Rapattoni IMS at the AOR, I looked into the AOR getting its own paypal account setup for member purchases and payments but at that time it was not as competitive with our bank fees for credit card processing. Not to mention, if we had adopted it our accounting department would surely have had heart failure. LOL.