Paypal Micropayments

[MOH]

Has anyone ever used this?

Seems to be an option where you can set your account up to be charged fees of 5% + €0.05, instead of the standard 3.4% + €0.35.
Which works out cheaper for anything below €18.75.
Applies to all transactions on your account, but useful if you have a large volume of low cost transactions.

The interesting thing is that while Paypal's FAQs seem to prohibit having more than one business account, this page seems to recommend having both a standard and micropayments account, and directing the transaction to each as appropriate.

Waiting for clarification from Paypal, but would be interested to hear if anyone has used this option in the past.

 

[mneylon]

Interesting.
For us that might be an interesting option, as we have quite a few clients that might only have a domain registration or a monthly shared hosting bill.
I *think* that we get an overall better rate by sticking to the volume discount though ..

 

[paul]

You can also save some money by using MassPay, you upload a CSV file with the payment details. Here's an old blog post of mine on it.
How to save some of the PayPal fees « Blackdog SEO

It's also good if you want to send someone an exact amount, and want to absorb the fees yourself. You could use one of those online paypal calculators, but a quick CSV file can be handy too.

 

[MOH]

Fairly quick reply from Paypal. So yes, there's no problem having multiple business accounts, and using one for micropayments and the other for larger ones - in fact they recommend that.
You just go to the micropayments site (which helpfully doesn't work in Chrome, but Firefox is OK), login and convert your account to micropayments.

Since this affects *all* transactions, and from googling it appears you can only change to/from micropayments billing every 6 months, I'd strongly recommend setting up a second account and doing it with that one, not your main account.

Now for the fun of trying to get Magento to recognise two Paypal accounts.

@paul: Thanks for that. I should have been clearer in the OP - I'm talking more from the merchant point of view, fees for sales transactions.

 

[mneylon]

Interesting. I wonder if any of the shopping carts support multiple Paypal accounts dependent on transaction value ..