PayPal Business Account – How to Open a PayPal Business Account
Are you keen on opening a PayPal Business account? Or better yet, do you want to know the pros and cons of a PayPal business account before opening? This article will guide you through the ropes of the PayPal business account.
What is PayPal Business Account?
First let’s break down the core function of the service itself.
For several years now, PayPal has made it possible for companies to free themselves from their usual banking partner.
PayPal is a payment service used and accepted by merchants around the world. This very popular system is simple, fast and secure. To be able to make online purchases, the customer must link his PayPal account to a bank card. The merchant’s account is credited immediately after payment.
To receive payments from your customers, you must open a PayPal business account. It is important to choose the right type of account, as it is not possible to accept payments from customers with a regular PayPal account.
If you already have a PayPal business account, you can add PayPal as a payment method to your store site.
Pros and Cons Of PayPal Business Account
The Paypal business account has many advantages, especially in terms of ease of use. But it’s also worth mentioning the downsides that come with it!
Advantages of Paypal Business Account
- Merchant Protection: In the event of complaints, bank charges or cancellations as a result of unauthorized payments or orders not received by your customers, there is a merchant protection in place. This applies to tangible, intangible and digital goods.
- International Payments: Payments for millions of platform users are valid across the world. Your business is no longer subject to transaction limits.
- When opening a free Paypal business account, no fees are requested at creation.
- Invoicing and Payment Management: The user has invoicing tools, allowing him to issue, edit and send invoices simply by entering the email address of his recipients.
- Sales Follow-up and Reports: In the “Activity” section, the latest transactions are displayed automatically. The user can filter the dates to display specific types of transactions.
- Online Assistance: Customer service can be contacted at any time by message, phone, by consulting the community forum, or even through a dispute manager.
Disadvantages of the PayPal Business Account
Here is a quick overview of the cons of a Paypal business account:
- As the platform is old, upsell processes are limited. It is only possible to redirect a customer to another product after purchasing their initial product.
- There will be many requests for verifications if you add beyond the 2000 euros on your account.
- The customer service, although available, places the user in situations of sometimes very long waits (up to 20 or 25 minutes sometimes).
- Charges Can be Exorbitant: Although, there are no monthly fees, charges to be taken into account on each transaction, which can drastically burgeon your bill on large transactions.
These fees are 2.9% of the amount, plus a fixed commission. However, when receiving a cross-border payment, between 0.5 and 2% of the amount of the transaction is requested. The same applies in the case of conversion from one currency to another, which is 4% of the amount.
- The transfer time can be long.
- Finally, not all websites accept Paypal payments. This can be limiting in the context of your professional activity, in particular with your suppliers.
It will be understood that a Paypal business account has its advantages, particularly in terms of flexibility, but also heavy limit impositions must be taken into account before making a decision.
How to Open a PayPal Business Account
- Go to PayPal.
- Select Professional Account and click Continue.
- Enter your email address and click Continue.
- Enter your email address, a password and fill in your contact details. Select the I accept and consent to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy check box. Click on Validate and continue.
- Choose your type of business.
- Choose a professional category. Click on Continue.
- Fill out the form and click Continue.
- Continue on the configuration page by clicking on the Configure your payments button.
Your PayPal business account is ready to use. You have to confirm your e-mail address by clicking on a validation link which has been sent to you at this address.
Now you can finish setting up your account directly on this link (you must be logged in to your PayPal account).
In order to receive payments from your customers, you need to link a bank account to your PayPal account. Click Preferences and continue to Save and Confirm Card.
To do this:
- Enter your credit card information and click Continue.
- Your card will be debited by an amount less than €2 to ensure that it is your bank card.
- In the name of this transaction on your account statement, you will see a 4-digit code.
- Copy the code and enter it in your PayPal account in the Confirm your card section.
- PayPal will refund this money to your PayPal account within 24 hours of confirming your card.
- Once your bank card has been confirmed, you will be able to lift the transfer limits. Click on Preferences and then on Lift your account limits.
- Select the limits you want to lift (maximum amount allowed to send money from your PayPal account or the maximum withdrawal) and confirm by clicking Lift Limits.
Top Tip:
You can watch a short video tutorial from PayPal on YouTube.
You can now integrate PayPal as a payment method for your online store.
Once these steps have been completed, you will have created your PayPal business account. It is therefore an operation that is carried out in a few clicks, which does not require any technicalities or sending of specific supporting documents.
Note: If it still seems like brain surgery to complete your PayPal business account completion, you can always ask for professional help from PayPal themselves.
To do this just leave the process uncompleted, having provided your email address and you will receive a inbox titled “Need help completing your signup?” We’re here to help”, with several helpful tools to help finish the signing up.