better money

Paypal is...

Paypal is an electronic currency, Founded in 1998, PayPal has quickly become a global leader in online payment solutions with 100 million account members worldwide. Available in 55 countries and regions around the world, online retailers, online businesses, as well as traditional offline businesses are transacting with PayPal.?

PayPal has received close to 20 awards for technical excellence from the internet industry and the business community at large-most recently the 2003 Webby Award for Best Finance Site.

What are the Benefits of Using PayPal?
It's Fast
Payments are made immediately, quicker than sending checks or money orders. 

It's Private
PayPal does not reveal your financial information to sellers. 

It's Global
PayPal is accepted worldwide, and can be used to make payments locally or internationally. 

It's Easy
Send money to anyone in just a few clicks. 

It's Trusted
Industry-leading fraud prevention keeps you safe and secure. 

It's Cost-Effective
It's free to send money, and PayPal is affordable for businesses of all sizes. 

Why Would I Use PayPal?
Let me put it this way, the site my wife and I put together accepts credit cards. In order to be able to do that, we had to set up a secure server, attain a secure certificate from Verisign, and have a shopping cart / checkout system programmed for us. It cost us a fairly decent amount of money. 
With PayPal, one can basically bypass all of that. I have seen numerous mom-and-pop level online stores that proclaim they accept PayPal as payment. The basic concept is that someone sends an email requesting to buy an item. The seller approves the sale. The buyer then goes to PayPal and makes a secure transfer of funds.
An email letter arrives in the seller's box with the text "You've Got Money!" It's a take off on the AOL "You've Got Mail!" Get it? 
The email provides a link. The seller clicks to check to make sure the correct amount of money has been transferred from one account to another. If all is on the up and up, the seller can download the payment onto a credit card, into a bank account, or request a check. The transaction is finished and the product is sent. 
Furthermore, the PayPal process is not just for e-business. Let's say I owe you $20 from dinner last night or I picked the Browns over the Steelers and lost. If we're both PayPal clients, I can pay you for dinner or pay off that bet. (Although I don't know that PayPal would be too happy if they knew people were paying off illegal bets). 
A transfer, is a transfer, is a transfer be it e-commerce or just two friends making things even-Steven. 
Heck, you can now even download PayPal onto your Palm device. 

Why Wouldn't I Use PayPal?
Before this begins to sound like a ten-page advertisement, allow me to address some of the down sides I found with the service. Please understand that these statements may become invalid as the PayPal system changes and updates. 
For one, you can only deal with a client that has PayPal. If you run an e-business and only accept PayPal, you limit yourself to only those who are "in the club". You may not think that is such a big problem since the service has customers numbering into the millions, but compared to the number of people who have credit cards...you're limiting those who can use the system. To that end, I see PayPal being only one possible method of payment rather than being the end all for an online business. 
It use to be that PayPal didn't accept international customers. Well, they do now so this isn't much of a down side but I thought I'd mention it anyway. 
Lastly, and this will probably tee off some real PayPal fans, PayPal isn't seen as the "correct" method of online buying. I am only working with what I have read and heard from others, but I have found that many people see PayPal as something that works for auctions but not for true e-commerce. That is reserved for credit cards in many people's eyes. 
To further that statement, I don't see the major online e-commerce sites rushing to accept PayPal. They are staying with traditional credit card transactions. I have had people tell me I must put PayPal on my wife's site while others have told me that a PayPal logo would cheapen the site. 

If you do not yet have Paypal account, you may do it for free using the following logo.