Micropayments

[Jossu79]

I have Paypal business account. I have been receiving under 10€ payments about 1 month now. I accidentally noticed in the Google results about Paypal micropayments. I was suprised that Paypal has this kind of feature but it is impossible to find it from Paypal website, for example pages where the fees are listed, there is no word about micropayments.

So here comes couple of questions for you guys:

Why micropayments is so hard to activate ?

Why you are hiding it ?

Why it is not activated automatically for low payments? 

When I finally found something about micropayments, this URL address where it should be activated, they dont work:

https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/

It gives 404 not found. 

Also your website userinterface is very annoying. Make some usability testing at least to your services.

[snowshoe]

PayPal Labs is going thru some changes, try this link:

https://www.paypalobjects.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropayments.html

[Antti]

I tried that link, and created a business account. So now I have 2 business accounts.  But still the only place where micropayments is mentioned is in the URL address of that link? I can't see any option where to choose micropayments anywhere in Paypal userinterface. Or do I now have micropayments enabled ? 

I still don't get this, why this feature is so hidden ?

Does Paypal really offer any micropayments pricing model or is this all a just a joke? My 3 e-commerce sites are now on hold (users cannot buy) because I am not going to pay extra high fees until I find out about this  "micropayments" 

"PayPal Labs is going thru some changes"

How come this size service can be offline now over several days...It's almost like Google would shut down their Adwords and won't even tell the possible date when it comes back up again... 

[sandypurins]

If the PayPal Objects link works the same as the PayPal Labs link, you should now have a Micropayments account.  Have someone send you a small payment or call PayPal to verify this.

PayPal's Micropayments fees are described in Section 8.5 of PayPal's User Agreement.  Here's part of the text from that section and the link to that section...

8.5 Micropayments Fees.  PayPal offers two micropayments fee programs: (i) Micropayments for Digital Goods, and (ii) Micropayments Pricing.

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US#8

~Sandy

[Antti]

" you should now have a Micropayments account"

I should, but why it's not written anywhere in the user interface ? Do I really have to try and buy something and then manually calculate to see if I have micropayments or not? It just can't be so hard to put a title somewhere in the profile page "your account is now micropayments enabled" or something like that ?? 

I have been using Paypal business account now about 1 month, I really feel like I am using 10 years old Nokia phone, usability, where are you? Hope Paypal won't think they are the biggest and best forever, like Nokia did. 

[Antti]

Hey

I created secondary business account and made test payment to it, still no micropayments fee activated. This really **bleep**. Paypal should pay me back the fees i have now lost without micropayments.

Then I found a page where Paypal is trying to explain their micropayments:

https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/micropayments

What really is funny they ask to take a call to them to activate micropayments fee?  I think it's now 2013, not 1993.

"To take advantage of Micropayments rates, sign up to use either website payments pro, if you're just starting to accept payments, or Express checout if your want to add PayPal to your exsisting checkout, and then give us a call to apply for the special rate."

And still.."Paypal labs" site is down..now for 1 week and they don't even give a hint when it's going to be back online. 

[sandypurins]

It's my understanding that the PayPal Labs website has been discontinued... see this EcommerceBytes article and the PayPal comments in the update section...

UPDATE 4/15/13:  PayPal is not doing away with its micropayments pricing plan, the company told EcommerceBytes overnight:  "We can assure our merchants that PayPal will continue to offer micropayments pricing.  The message on our website is to notify customers that we are retiring that specific webpage, but not the pricing program.  We apologize for the confusion this may have caused for our customers."

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2013/4/1365975743.html

It's unfortunate that PayPal retired the PayPal Labs page.  I used it to convert one of my PayPal accounts to micropayments pricing... it worked perfectly.

It looks like you will need to call PayPal to switch your account to micropayments.

~Sandy

[hollylu]

I agree with Antti - I now have a second business account also and no micropayments! Why does it have to be so difficult? I have wasted hours trying to find the answer to this question! I am ready to just say 'forget it' and use the old fee schedule. (Maybe that is what they want.... but then why even mention the other one?!?!)

Frustrated