Clarifying PayPal payments vs Credit Card payments

[RedWombat]

Good day.

I'm curious about the difference between a customer paying with a paypal account vs paying with a credit card.

It seems that I read that there are no fees when a customer pays with paypal, but when they pay with a credit card it is 2.9% + $0.30 for the transaction.

Is this true?

If it is true, how can I find out if a purchase by a customer was paid with paypal or a credit card when I log in?

Thanks,

Carl

[allergycheryl]

If your question about a fee you pay or a fee your customer pays?

The customer should not be paying any PayPal or credit card fees.  If your customer pays with PayPal, you pay the fee the customer does not.  If your customer pays with a credit card, then the fee depends on your credit card processing company (it pays to shop these fees and interchange charges because they can vary widely) but the customer does not pay the fee.  While all of my payments pass through one gateway, the PayPal ones show up in that account and the credit card ones show up in my merchant account.

There is no way to tell if the customer has their PayPal account linked to a credit card or a bank account.

Clear as mud?

[RedWombat]

Thank you so much for your reply.

Makes sense.

This would be us being the merchant and a customer making a payment to us.  I'm trying to figure out how much in fees are deducted per transaction when a customer makes a purchase through paypal.

I have the paypal api integrated into our website.  If a customer wants to make a credit card purchase using Visa, MC, Discover or Amex, we try to direct them to our merchant account which has lower fees.  We give them the option of using paypal because it was requested by the client we created the site for.

I'm familar with way the merchant processing works, just not paypal implementation of it.

What I'm looking for is how much in fees is deducted from the purchase price if someone comes through using their paypal account to make payment?  Is it always 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction whether they persons uses a credit card or funds in their paypal account?

The documentation seemed to imply that if a customer uses their paypal account for the purchase as opposed to a credit card, there would be no fees charged to us, the merchant for the transaction.  This seemed a little odd, because I would assume that every transaction would be charged no matter how the payment is made, whether from a credit card or via funds in the customers paypal account.

I just needed some sort of clarification, details or verification how this process works with paypal.

Does this makes sense?

Thanks,

Carl

[sandypurins]

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@RedWombat wrote:

What I'm looking for is how much in fees is deducted from the purchase price if someone comes through using their paypal account to make payment?  Is it always 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction whether they persons uses a credit card or funds in their paypal account?

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Hi Carl,

For Purchase Payments, the recipient of the payment will always pay the fee and the standard PayPal fee is 2.9% plus 30 cents.  The rate will be lower if you qualify for one of the merchant rate tiers... more information about merchant rates is available at the following link...

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_fees-rate-about

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@RedWombat wrote:

The documentation seemed to imply that if a customer uses their paypal account for the purchase as opposed to a credit card, there would be no fees charged to us, the merchant for the transaction.  This seemed a little odd, because I would assume that every transaction would be charged no matter how the payment is made, whether from a credit card or via funds in the customers paypal account.

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I believe you are referring to PayPal Personal Payments for which there is no fee charged to either the recipient or the sender when the transaction is a domestic USD payment funded by PayPal balance or bank account. The "Fees" section of PayPal's User Agreement has all the details... here's the link...

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/UserAgreement_full&...

[RedWombat]

Thank you.

I belive it's cleared for me now. 

I appreciate the information and the links.  They were very helpful.

I find finding information on paypal is difficult.  It's hard to tell which category you might fall into.

Thanks again!

Carl