The buzz today was about Intuit’s Payment Network. It is fee simple at $0.50.
People are frustrated with PayPal. The fees. The hurdles to jump through. The ease of use that does not exist. And the 4 day delay to transfer money out of PayPal (eBay owns them) to your own bank account.
People forget that merchant services (credit card processing) costs money. Most brick-and-mortar retail stores have a card swipe machine that usually comes with a monthly fee (rental or lease payment) on top of the actually bank fees for credit card processing. VISA, Mastercard, AMEX and Discover want the money for the risk. More money for more risk for online cc processing. With PayPal I pay high fees but I don’t pay a monthly charge nor do I have any quotas or minimums.
I also do not have to worry about PCI Compliance, which is a big PITA.
One thing about the Intuit’s Payment Network: it doesn’t accept credit cards. It’s cheap because it’s mainly ACH transactions. I have a problem with that. I use bill pay discreetly – to insurance companies and credit card companies, who have to be security compliant.
I for one am scared of ACH, because if they can hack credit card info, they can certainly hack ACH info. It’s the same reason I do not use a debit card for anything but the ATM machine. There’s no protection if your bank account or debit card get whacked. Who wants to fight with the bank after my account was wiped out? Have you ever fought with a bank about an ACH transaction that went the wrong way (they took the money out not in). It took weeks to get resolution – and not to my satisfaction.
Let’s face it we live in a credit card society. There are costs to that. Even Authorize.net has monthly charges for cc processing. But the complainers are usually also the cheapskates.