Why PayPal Sucks & Some Better Alternatives

Up until 2 months ago, PayPal was my default payment system.. I’d been a customer for over 5 years and had run hundreds of thousands of dollars through my account. Unfortunately, in summer last year they decided to permanently limit my account for “reasons relating to the safeguarding of PayPal” aka, they didn’t like the website I was selling products on.. Even though the website they didn’t like, wasn’t even my website!

I was actually receiving affiliate commissions for a website I was promoting, and repeatedly told the PayPal staff this in the review stage. They didn’t listen, and kept asking me for a username & password for the site – Even though I didn’t own it, I was just getting commissions for promoting it. The support staff didn’t seem to get this through their heads and after several emails & phone calls, permanently limited my account.

A few weeks later, I managed to get a family member to let me use their account, linked to a legitimate business and over 5 years old… A few months later? They gave it a permanent limitation, again, this time their reason was chargebacks, even though the account had over 600 transactions in the last 3 months and only 1 chargeback – When speaking on the phone about both of these accounts, the support staff said something along the lines of “It’s a final decision, you can’t do anything, you’ll get your money sometime in the next 6 months” – 6 months went by, and still nothing. In fact, it took over 195 days to get my money out of my first account, and my second one? Well it’s still “under review”, and has been since May 16th… With a rather lot of money in it:

I estimate they’ll pay out my second account sometime in September, possibly October… Fun times. Not.

I would like to note that this seems to only be affecting PayPal UK accounts, I’ve owned a PayPal Canada account since 2014 and had no problems with it – Though due to business/tax reasons, I can hardly use it now, since moving back to the UK from Canada. The UK PayPal team seem to do this at their own will, and are really damaging their reputation within the country. It was recently featured on a BBC program broadcast to millions of people how PayPal are screwing over a lot of legitimate businesses with their (what seems to be) random limitations of real accounts, that pose no threat or risk.

When my second account got limited, I’d had enough… I decided to walk away from PayPal, for good. I needed some better alternatives that wouldn’t restrict me for rather pathetic reasons. I spent weeks looking through different providers, going off recommendations from people and ended up finally finding 3 I’ve stuck with (for now), so I thought I’d share with you guys & gals my favourite PayPal alternatives.

PayPal Alternatives

There isn’t a system like PayPal that’s anywhere near as big, so it can be hard to work around, but there are definitely some great alternatives out there… You just have to use a mixture of them, or work around the indiviual pros and cons of each.

Payoneer

Payoneer is by far my favourite one I’ve used so far and it’s really easy to use.

Note: When you recieve your first $100 in Payoneer, you’ll get a free $25 bonus with this link.

It’s literally a 3 step process to be able to receive and spend money with Payoneer, and the balance you get is actually worth something in real life, rather than the magical internet monies PayPal balance you’d normally have access to.

Step 1: Signup for Payoneer:

Step 2: Apply for their PrePaid MasterCard

Step 3: Invoice clients with the “Request A Payment” feature. They’ll get an email with an invoice attached, and a link to pay you via card. Once they’ve paid, it takes 2 – 4 days to get the money “loaded” onto your MasterCard – Which you can then spend, spend, spend to your hearts content, just like any other credit card.

Likewise, if you want to send money to someone, just go to the “Make A Payment” option in the account menu, and you’ll be able to send money to anyone who is on (or isn’t on) Payoneer:

You can also use Payoneer to payout to your bank account, if that’s where you want the money to go instead.

Payoneer vs PayPal Fees

Payoneer is the clear winner when it comes to fees, and if you signup, it requires no subscription fees – The only thing you’d now have to pay for is a replacement card, if you were to lose it, which’d cost $12.50.

I highly recommend you get a Payoneer account, like I said above… Use this link to get a free $25 once you’ve received $100 into your account.

Stripe

Take payments on your website? Delete every PayPal logo on your site and start processing them through Stripe.

Visitors don’t have to leave your site, and all you need is an SSL certificate and a CMS that allows Stripe integration, or use their super simple API (tons of documentation) and a plugin/developer to integrate it into your site.

Stripe will NEVER limit your account, so you never have to worry about them blocking payments to your account and payout to a bank account of your choice 2 days (if you’re US based) after the payment is received, or 7 days if you’re outside of the US.

PayPal vs Stripe Fees

Interestingly, PayPal is cheaper for larger payments, whilst Stripe is cheaper for smaller payments.

Note: This is based on having a full PayPal business account, including the monthly subscription fee and receiving payments to & from the US. International PayPal fees are different, generally more expensive where as Stripe stays the same in every country. Stripe is also free to use, no subscriptions required.

I’d also like to note that my experience with Stripe support was one of the best, ever… They replied to every ticket within 40 minutes, where as PayPal took days, if not weeks to update you, whilst holding your money hostage throughout and telling you there was nothing they can do via phone support, you just “have to wait” – I can imagine if it was a small business owner, it’d feel like an eternity, and potentially jeopardize their entire businesses future.

Skrill

Out of the 3 alternatives, Skrill is the one I’ve used the least… I’ve only really used it to buy stuff from Envato mainly, and load up my PokerStars balance a few times… Generally on losing days 🙁

Skrill, formally known as MoneyBookers is best known for hosting payments for casino based sites, but has since become very popular in quite a few others niches as well – It’s kind of a mix between Payoneer and Stripe, their API is a bit weaker than Stripe’s but it also has the added bonus of having an online balance, as well as a prepaid card you can spend it on.

Skrill also offers no fee transfers to different countries every 3 months, when this post was written you could send money (for free) to:

• Albania
• Nepal
• Philippines
• Indonesia
• Armenia
• Sri Lanka
• Ghana
• Fiji
• Kenya
• Burkina Faso

Great for paying VAs then.

Skrill’s currency exchanging fees are the only fee that is more expensive than PayPal and it’s the only service on this list that doesn’t charge you if someone does a chargeback against the money they sent you.

Thanks For Reading

I hope you enjoyed this post and it helped some of you with moving away from PayPal’s hold. If you have any further recommendations for better alternatives, why not drop it in the comments section below?