Technofriends

Assuming you have answered the key questions before you setup your website and have narrowed down to the fact that your website will indeed sell specific stuff, at some point, you will have to collect the payment from the consumer online ( until and unless you have a different payment process in mind).

In this article, i will walk you through the step by step process of setting up your own E-Commerce website which will be able to take the payments from customers using Paypal’s Payment processing engine. For the sake of simplicity, i am assuming that you have created ( or will be able to create) the webpage using which the customer’s will be able to buy stuff ( basically a page, which will offer items which are on sale).

Paypal’s Website Payments Standard allows you to accept credit cards, debit cards, bank transfers, and PayPal.

1.) Navigate to Paypal Website Payments Standard to get started.

2.) For your website, you must have a Pay Now type button, which the user will click on the website to make a payment. With the Paypal Website Payments Standard, you have the option to either create a “Buy Now” button or “Add to Cart” button.

“Buy Now” button should be chosen when you intend to sell a service ( rather a single service), on the other hand, if you are planning to sell multiple items, having a shopping cart will be very useful; for such a use-case, choose the “Add t0 Cart” button. You can get started with designing buttons by clicking here.

3.) On the page that follows, you will need to select the button type and enter payment details. You can create buttons for selling products, services, subscriptions ( which involve recurring billing), accepting donations and for Gift certificates.

4.) You can even customize the look and feel and even add options and prices etc. Once you are done, press the button at the bottom called “Create Button”.

5.) Next you will be given the code, which you need to copy and paste in your website. This will add the button for payment processing on your website.

If you have a Paypal account, you can save your buttons and also track inventory of your products using Paypal Business Account. One thing to note is, your users will be redirected to Paypal’s website ( i.e. the address on the browser will change to Paypal’s once they click on the button link). Paypal doesnt charge any monthly, set-up, or cancellation fees and you do not pay anything till you get the money. However, you do need to pay a transaction fees.

Paypal also offers a Website Payments Pro which allows you to integrate the shopping cart and also take payments from your website itself without re-directing your users to Paypal. However, unlike Paypal Standard Payments, this costs $30 per month + transaction fees ( which you pay with the standard plan as well).

In my honest opinion, if you are a small store, go for the standard option. I have used this option on some of my earlier websites ( which don’t exist anymore) and it does work well.

Also Read: PPCalc is an Online PayPal Fee Calculator

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