PayPal Website Integration

PayPal is a highly technical tool that is very easy for the end user to use.

The system works like this:

• The user signs up for a PayPal account
• They then add a card to their account to make payments
• When they make an online payment through PayPal, their card details are not shared
• They can also receive money to their PayPal account
• Funds can be added and withdrawn from their account, just like a normal bank account

Security is something that PayPal has always put great emphasis on, and for good reason.

Online payments are always at risk of online scammers, who try to capture payment details and other sensitive info.

With PayPal, the vendor never sees the customer’s card details, and they are never stored on the merchant’s database.

For this reason, your card details are completely secure from hackers and people trying to steal your details.

While consumers may not know all the ins and outs of the service, they certainly know brand authority when they see it, and PayPal is one of the most trusted brands out there.

It is for this reason that a PayPal payment integration into your website can seriously increase perceived trust in your company, leading to more conversions on your site.

If your selling goods and services online, you should be aware of checkout flow and friction in the payment process.

Basically, anything that slows down the process of your customer getting their wallet out and making a purchase is bad, and can drastically hurt your sales.

Ever noticed that you get a high number of abandoned carts?

People will get all the way to the cart page, where they have a product ready to buy, but they will make a U-turn at the last minute and you will lose the sale.

Here’s a few things that increase checkout friction and lead to lost sales:

• An off-page checkout completion – as soon as a user leaves your website, friction is introduced and the chance that they will abandon their cart increases
• Confusing checkout forms – the more information a customer has to fill out, the more friction they experience
• Asking for unnecessary details – too many forms is unnecessary and can be frustrating
• Shipping charges not clearly displayed – this is more important than you think and people will be put off by surprise shipping charges

The best thing about PayPal is that is completely negates all of these issues with one integration process.

Your customers click one button, stay on your site and simply log in using their PayPal password and PayPal takes care of the payment and the shipping details.

The process of integrating your website with the PayPal system is usually fairly straightforward, if you know what you are doing.

1. Set up your client integration and/or PayPal code script
2. Set up and execute the payment action on your website
3. Test the button and payment process
4. Go live and test a live transaction
5. Verify transactions are working

If you do all these steps properly then your final live transaction should go through without a hitch.

If your PayPal account is a new account then your first few transactions may be held by PayPal for security reasons.

Once you have cleared the security time period, the money will then be available to withdraw to any account you wish.