| Google Unveils The New "Google Checkout" |
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On Thursday, 6/29/2006, Google announced the release of their new merchant gateway - "Google Checkout," and I am quite impressed with their offer. To see what I mean, lets take a look at the competition 1)Paypal. Anyone who has bought on Ebay before is probably familiar. On the bright side, Paypal allows merchants to begin selling without having to jump through hoops for Visa and Mastercard just to accept credit cards. Paypal handles the payments, and the money is deposited into a Paypal account. From there, the merchant has to withdraw the money to their personal/business bank account (which can take upwards of three business days). But for many, Paypal has been one of the biggest nightmares a merchant could face. Although there is no monthly fee, Paypal charges 2.9% of all sales. And because there are so many Paypal scams floating around the internet, Paypal will lock down accounts from time to time - and freezes the funds within. Since Paypal is not considered a bank, the merchant has little recourse other than to plead with Payal to remove the restrictions from the account. Horror stories available at http://paypalsucks.com/sitemap.shtml 2)2checkout (2CO). This solution caters more to websites who work outside of ebay. Merchants can offer products, and 2CO will accept the payment for the merchant, depositing the funds directly into the merchant's bank account. The integration is quite simple, however the fees are steep: 5.5% of all sales with an additional .49 cents on each sale - almost double that of Paypal. Now we can examine Google's new offer - Google Checkout.
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