Hi again!

We love ecommerce, we love building ecommerce systems. Why? Well they are the future. A fully automated shop that can recieve orders and payments around the clock with little input from the vendor. Sure, they take a little while to set-up, stock and be given a visual impact. Sometimes they require a little investment in both time and money. There is alot of competition out there so it pays to have a shopping site that stands out and is very easy to use. Above all it should be backed up by reliable service and deliverys as promised!

However once it is built you can set it to work. Think of an ecommerce site like an employee that never asks to be paid, never complains and promotes your business full time, 24/7. Brilliant!

So a major decision to make when developing your Digital shop is what payment methods are you going to adopt? You need to accept Credit Cards, the tried and tested other methods of EFT (electronic fund transfer) and of course good old COD (cash on delivery). Being from the UK and in the past trading largley with Europe and America we have come to take Paypal for granted. It is very easy to slot into your site. You just need an account with PayPal, they give you an email address to use and you can recieve payments via a whole range of methods. It is secure, relativley cheap, trusted and ever so convienient. Above all it just “works” and this has been proven over and over again by millions of users worlwide.

PayPal in South Africa

So you can sign up for an account here > http://paypal.com/za

Why should I use PayPal? – PayPal enables South Africans to sell to PayPal’s global customer base of more than 81 million active accounts in 190 markets around the world and move the proceeds to their FNB accounts. (South Africa is the 190th country to get paypal accounts!)

This drastically lowers the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs to setup online stores and instantly start selling online. Bad news for online merchant providers like MyGate, VCS and even MWEB’s Safeshop.

Problems with PayPal in South Africa, how does it all work?

• Your paypal.com account will be based in US Dollars. Not too bad for people using it for international payments. If you are using ZAR as your primary currency then we can programme checkout systems to convert the final checkout amount into USD so PayPal can process the payment. Currently PayPal does NOT recognise ZAR as a trading currency!

• You have 30 days to transfer your money back to South Africa. You can’t keep the money in your Paypal.com account as a wallet … that would be in contravention of the Reserve Bank Regulations and FNB’s Terms of Service. You will be responsible for making sure the money comes back in time.

• Each transaction must be uniquely identified. Every detail about the sender, receiver and the transaction will be reported to the Reserve Bank.

• South Africans will not be getting the full Paypal.com experience. We can send and receive money but will not be able to use the buy-now buttons in South African Rands. This means that you can’t use Paypal.com on your website that focuses on a South African market. So you will have to use a second merchant gateway to handle ZAR transactions or get us to convert PayPal so it is useable in South Africa. This is a big disappointment. The biggest struggle  South Africans have is the fact that they need multiple payment gateways. Our biggest hope was that we could ditch everything else and use Paypal.com exclusively for our clients, very easy and clean but not to be for the moment I am afraid!

• FNB will be adding 1.5% onto the transaction value. This, coupled with Paypal.com’s 3.4% + R2.10 per transaction, takes us to almost 5% – which means that one of Paypal’s most attractive features – the low transaction fee – is negated for South Africans.

This is not the Paypal.com experience that the rest of the world enjoys. South Africa is governed by archaic Exchange Regulation that has been abandoned by the rest of the world after the Second World War. (Only 24 countries in the world still use Exchange Controls including China, Zimbabwe and North Korea). The introduction of Paypal.com through FNB to South Africans will only benefit a small handful of freelancers who can only receive payment from abroad. For the true Internet Business Owner, get some serious advise from Computer Geek Services before you decide on PayPal and your Paygate systems!

For a small fee we can make paypal work for you in South Africa, ask the experts – Computer geek Services