You run a small business, so operating a full Point of Sale system seems excessive. But you need to take credit cards. You’ve got an iPhone. What can be done?
Well, until today, Square was the only place to turn, and it wasn’t a bad option. But apparently, PayPal got sick of people pissing in their “helping out small business” Cheerios. And lo, PayPal Here was born.
From the PayPal announcement:
So, you’re asking, how is this different from other small business mobile payment solutions?
It’s not. I mean, it offers a few new features, but it’s a blatant ripoff of Square.
The key differentiator is that it comes from PayPal, a trusted brand in the online payments industry with more than 100 million customers around the globe and years of proven payment innovation, driving growth for millions of businesses globally.
Translation: “We’re cooler than you, so we started our own party.” (Also, the dongle looks like one of those chewable vitamins you take when you’re 6. That’s different too.)
PayPal Here comes with our world-class fraud management capabilities, and our 24×7 live customer support.
(Emphasis mine.) Your “world-class fraud management capabilities”? You mean the ones where you have someone destroy a “counterfeit” violin, instead of returning it to the seller? Or where you tell Regretsy that the money submitted through your “Donate” link isn’t a proper donation after all?
In addition to accepting more payment methods, PayPal Here offers a simple flat rate of 2.7% for card swipes and PayPal payments. Merchants are also given a business debit card for quick access to their funds and 1% cash back on eligible purchases – which means if you use the debit card, your fees are actually just 1.7%!
We beat out the competitor by 0.05%. Also, we’ll convince you that 1% cash back on eligible purchases is the same as only having 1.7% fees. You don’t buy it? Well… uh…
I haven’t been hands on with this, so I truly don’t know if the software is any good. But I really, really hate PayPal, and go elsewhere whenever possible (using Square or Dwolla have been my methods). Am I being a cynical jerk about this? Probably. But I’m sick of watching the big corporations crap all over the little guy just because they can. I hope people recognize this and continue to use Square’s services.
