Thread: Online payments - paypal / magento

Hey Guys,

I’m looking for some advice on accepting online payments with PayPal. I’m planning on developing a small online store using Magento.

What I’m looking to find out is:

1. How seamless is the PayPal express checkout?
   
2. How easily is PayPal integrated with magento?
   
3. If you are using one PayPal account for taking payments from multiple websites, can you have alternative business names displayed when the customer proceeds to the PayPal checkout? For example, if my registered business name with PayPal is UK Web Hosting Company and the customer purchases an item from my website UK Pet Supplies, when the customer is directed to PayPal it informs them that they are making a payment to UK Web Hosting Company. Is there any way around this?

Hope that last one makes sense!

Thanks in advance

Can't comment on 1 or 2, sorry. But I would certainly recommend different Paypal accounts for different businesses. Partially due to the potential confusion as you mention, but don't forget the stories about Paypal cutting off accounts, or keeping funds, for "spurious" reasons. Where some disgruntled customer complains, for instance.
If you're doing that though, you need separate bank accounts, as Paypal does do cross-checking on card and bank numbers.

Originally Posted by drs2004

For example, if my registered business name with PayPal is UK Web Hosting Company and the customer purchases an item from my website UK Pet Supplies, when the customer is directed to PayPal it informs them that they are making a payment to UK Web Hosting Company. Is there any way around this?

Could it work for you change the business name on the PayPal account to (as a rough example) 'The drs2004 Group' to encompass everything under one group name?

If you had separate websites with separate Pay Pal installs it would be possible to do something. However, with Magento I think it's just the one Pay Pal install for multi stores.

Vger

I would suggest that you are led by the legal requirements for trading online and if having one paypal account for two businesses falls within that, then at checkout you can inform your clients that they are being redirected to your group payment gateway.
That means you should setup that group payment gateway with a suitable name perhaps not calling itself "web hosting". The same would apply if payment for hosting is being done via paypal.

i've just spent 2 days on paypal express. it's quite easy to implement (apart from paypal sandbox is shockingly slow - it must be running on a 486)

documentation is better then google checkout too

Hi Guys,

Thanks a lot for all your responses. I decided to setup a separate paypal account. Saves any confusion for wary customers. On another note….Magento is crap!!!! I was having problems with installation so support kindly installed it for me. I must apologies for wasting their time as it didn’t last long . It’s made up of over 7 thousand files – it’s insane. I’m glad it’s terrible as it made me go looking for alternatives. I found prestashop, which I think is excellent! So easy to modify, style and very light weight. Installation was a no brainer and it is not complicated to use. Community forums are not too active, but apart from that V good.