Paypal User Agreement - Account Permanently Limited - Alternative Payments

So what do you do when all of a sudden you receive an email from Paypal stating your account has been permanently limited.

Does this come as a shock to you or do you not worry about it and think to yourself that there are alternative payment solutions on the web where you can make payments and receive money?

What if you are running a business and rely on Paypal to have payments sent to you or indeed your website’s script is built in such way that it interacts with receiving payments via Paypal.

The truth be known is that oftentimes Paypal users WILL have their account permanently limited if they are found to be in violation of the Paypal User Agreement.

Online businesses can be in violation of the agreement if they are found to be taking payments for anything that is associated with gambling and/or gaming activities, including casino games, sports betting, horse or greyhound racing, lottery tickets, certain games of skill, and other ventures that facilitate gambling. Plus, adult content, prescription drug listings and much more.

In the event that your account is limited; is it possible to ask Paypal to remove the limitation set and have your account reinstated?

We have searched the internet for this answer and have yet to come across any Paypal users that have been successful in having their Permanently Limited Account reinstated.

Of course there are other payment services online that are available as the following:

2Checkout - Merchant Account
Moneybookers - Online Payments
Alert - Pay Online
Google Checkout - Buy and Sell
Egold - Internet Payments

The above services all offer e-commerce solutions somewhat similar to Paypal but how do they compare?

Are their rates as low as Paypal, do they offer recurring billing payment services, will your website interact with the services listed, how popular are these payment services and would visitors to your website be willing to make payments through them?

The above are questions that will need to be answered before you proceed with creating an account with any of the above e-commerce solutions as they could end up costing you a small fortune.

Let us take a look at the services Paypal has to offer:

• Instant payments
• Low fees
• Recurring billing
• Buy now payments
• Shopping carts
• Payments with Debit or Credit Cards
• Email payment requests
• Over 150 million users Worldwide
• World renowned and trusted as an ecommerce solution

The next closest service to Paypal we believe are 2Checkout. The reason for this is that they offer almost everything that Paypal offer and; they also allow users to pay on their website via logging in to their Paypal accounts and making payment.

How great is that! It is all very well from the buyers perspective but unfortunately for the seller this may not very profitable.

The fees 2Checkout charges are fairly high compared to that of Paypal (2Checkout at 5% plus 25p / Paypal at 3.4% plus 20p per transaction).

On top of the higher fees that 2Checkout charge, they also require you to pay a $49.00 setup fee. If that is not high enough then for those of you who own multiple websites - you need to create a separate account for each site.

If you rely on Paypal to make payments and receive money for your business then it is strongly recommended you read the Paypal User Agreement thoroughly and operate your business accordingly.

Failure to do so will lead to your Paypal account being Permanently Limited and without a means of making or receiving payments until you can find the perfect ecommerce solution to operate your business on.