Creating and verifying a PayPal business account

One way to accept credit card and bank payments through your website is to use PayPal. Creating a business PayPal account allows you to:

• accept Visa and Mastercard payments from visitors – no PayPal signup is required by them
• accept eChequepayments from visitors who are signed up to PayPal – an eCheque lets them pay from a bank account linke to their PayPal account

Your funds are received into your PayPal account, and from there you can transfer to a linked bank account.

Legal Entities

PayPal Business accounts can be opened for legal business entities such as a Sole Trader, Public Company, Proprietary Company, Government Body, Association or Partnership. In the past, PayPal did not permit Trust entities to open accounts, however this policy has changed and with approved documentation you can operate a PayPal account.

Fees

It doesn’t cost anything to set up a PayPal account, but they do charge a per transaction fee. Click on the Fees link at the bottom of the PayPal website to see how it works. Currently Australian clients pay 2.6% plus $0.30 for each domestic transaction, and 3.6% plus a fixed fee (often $0.30) for each international transaction – there is a sliding scale of fees, and a lower % rate is available for higher transaction values.

Setting up your PayPal account

• Step 1: Go to your local PayPal site, for example, PayPal US or PayPal Australia.
• Step 2: Click the Sign Up button to create your PayPal account – use an email address for this account that you are comfortable publicising as your PayPal account, for example, payments@yourdomain.com
• Step 3: Follow the sign up process to create a Business Account
• Step 4: Once you have set up your PayPal business account, you’ll need to verify and link your bank account. PayPal will deposit two small sums of money into your account, and you need to confirm those amounts to verify.

Allow a good week to verify your bank account. You can still accept funds into your PayPal account while your bank account is being verified, but you can’t transfer funds until the verification is complete.