PayPal Pro as an OpenCart Payment Gateway

Posted by Paul on May 29, 2013

There are lots of payment gateways available for OpenCart and it's important to choose one that will suit your needs. Some of the most popular include PayPal, SagePay and CardSave and all have their place.

Things to Consider

  • Reliability - will the gateway always be online?
  • Costs - what are the fees, monthly and per transaction?
  • Customer Experience - what is the user experience like when using the gateway? 
  • Support - how helpful are they with refunds, fraud etc.?
  • Integration - how easy is it to integrate the gateway in to your ecommerce site?

Benefits of PayPal Pro

  • Reliability
    I haven't ever known PayPal to go down, despite having used it regularly for years, so it's pretty reliable.
     
  • Customer Experience
    There's a common misconception that to pay with PayPal the customer will need a PayPal account. PayPal Pro is seemless, card details can be entered on the website itself (you must have SSL) and the customer never even needs to know PayPal were involved. This can be an advantage if you feel your customers would view PayPal as unprofessional.

  • Integration
    OpenCart comes with a PayPal Pro payment gateway extension which works very nicely and with a minimum of setup. A small change that can be made is changing it so that instead of saying "PayPal" as the checkout option it says something like "Credit or Debit Card (processed by PayPal)" or even just "Credit or Debit Card". But setting up PayPal Pro is generally straight forward.

Disadvantages of PayPal Pro

  • Costs
    At £20/month plus transaction fees starting at 3.4% plus 20p they're not the cheapest but if you're selling in volume on eBay then you may get fees as low as 1.4% plus 20p if you use the same PayPal account for both.

  • Support
    The PayPal support can be slow to respond and are known to err on the side of the buyer in disputes. This does however mean they are more trusted by buyers which should increase sales.

Conclusion

If you're selling a lot of items on eBay already or you plan to in the near future, PayPal Pro may be your best gateway option. If not, it might be worth looking for a cheaper alternative such as CardSave.

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