Yes, you could use PayPal for what you have in mind.
Business or Personal - depends on the what features you need.
Personal do have some limitations:
You cannot save the item button code to the Paypal servers or your account.
You cannot create an email URL text link.
You cannot create shipping methods or tax tables.
You cannot track inventory or profit and loss.
You cannot customize the checkout screens or display a logo and you don't have the option of any advanced features.
You cannot create an active recurring or subscription item button.
Your email address (the account owner) will be displayed on the PayPal Checkout Screens.
A Business account has all of those features and more. (Instead of displaying an email address on the PayPal Checkout Screens, Business Accounts allow you to display your Business or Organization's name or a Business Logo Graphic.)
Having said all of that - if your want to do is simply collect a payment and some additional data upfront like names and addresses, you could do it with a Personal Account. There's a fee of 2.9% plus $.30 on each transaction - when someone pays, PayPal deducts their fee and deposits the balance in your PayPal Account Balance. Who ever opens the account should link their bank account and a credit card - this is for account verification and removes the limits for both sending and withdraws and will lesson the chance of the possibility of having incoming funds held.
One suggestion would be set up a web page that has an item button on for payment and collecting whatever additional data you need. The members go to your web page, enter an amount and the data and click a link to go to the Checkout Screens. Once there, they can pay as guest or use their existing PayPal Account. (Suggest not using Wordpress or Facebook for something like this as these apps don't accept HTML Forms which is what the PayPal item button code is.)
There you go !!
