How many users will choose Paypal on an average ecommerce site given a choice?

Question

Want to know how valuable Paypal is on an ecommerce site ($20-$80 average orders).

Anybody want to run

SELECT COUNT(*), PaymentMethod FROM Orders GROUP BY PaymentMethod

for me?

Any thoughts on what pecentage of orders we might lose if we dont have Paypal. My instinct is to say 'a lot of people will probably not order if they have to give their credit card' but I'd really be interested to hear anyones experience in this field.

Answer 1

PayPal has a way to generate one-time disposible credit card numbers for sites that don't accept PayPal. So, if your site accepts credit cards, perhaps you could include some instructions on how to use PayPal's site to generate a disposible credit card number...

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

This is purely my opinion as a e-shopper, but if I'm buying from a site that I don't know and trust, I want to use a payment provider that I do trust.

I have certainly declined to purchase from sites that don't offer PayPal.

Answer 3

I find that about 10% of my members select paypal.

However, I don't know how many of those would refuse to order if we didn't offer it.

One thing I DO know is that the more payment methods you offer, the more orders you will get.

This is for a site that offers recurring subscriptions to a tool for webmasters.

Answer 4

Run a poll on your site? if your users indicate they would like it, Bob's your uncle.

You can even "hide" your intentions by making it a multiple choice:

Which payment method would you prefer for online transactions on this site?

• Visa
• American Express
• MasterCard
• PayPal
• Diners
• etc.

Answer 5

The data you are asking for will not help you determining how much business you would be winning with PayPal support, or loosing without it. Many people that use PayPal will just use their credit card, if PayPal is not supported. So the question you need to ask is rather: How many people will not buy from me, if I do not support PayPal?

btw, I have heard quite a lot of stories from customers about things going wrong with PayPal transactions. I definitely don't trust it, and refuse to buy from a site that doesn't offer a good alternative to it.

Answer 6

(Rounded to the nearest whole percentage point.)

• 1% Google Checkout

• 0% Check

• 1% Store Credit

• 0% Cash

• 0% Money Order

• 93% Credit Card

• 5% PayPal

out of ~ 14,000 payments since 1/1/2008.

Grains of salt:

• PayPal payments weren't accepted until late March.

• Google Checkout can only be used by US customers.

Answer 7

Can't give you number specifics but we know that it is country dependent, one of the countries we sell in almost never sees paypal as a payment type, another has a very high rate. It just seems to be paypals market penetration I guess. It will also probably depend on what you are selling.

Answer 8

I find that Paypal is more essential because it is widely used in eBay and Amazon behind credit cards. It is important to have as many payment methods you can offer.