PayPal is taking Visa & Mastercard, this time without the need of registering a PayPal Account?
We know PayPal has been saying buyer can checkout without a PayPal Account (by just using key-in their credit cards details) if they shop with Merchant who accepts PayPal (must be either Premier or Business Account.) Now they have released something "newer" - dubbed as "GUEST PAYMENT" (via Adaptive Payment API).
How true is that? We all know unlike cybersource (already acquired by Visa), RBSWorldPay and lot of other 3rd party online payment gateway service provider, PayPal let you register an account to accept online payment without any due diligence on your business background nor your credibility.
Imagine the risk. If they don't force you for verification, how does PayPal able to assess the credibility and authenticity for both the merchants and the customers? If PayPal can't do it, then there's practically no way for PayPal to play a commercially viable role in by facilitating the trade connecting both buyers and sellers in the faceless online world.
Fraud Happens. It's part of the risk of conducting e-commerce. Just ask any brick-and-mortar retailers, shrinkage is always part of the risk of retailing, the key is to minimize it. To protect the interest of the merchants, the buyers, and PayPal itself, it actually forces you to register an account if the payment amount exceed a certain threshold (now this makes more sense).
Some PayPal merchants informed us that the threshold is USD $60, some claimed it is USD $100. Anyone can share some experience here?
This is what PayPal is claiming on their FAQ page:
Do my buyers need a PayPal account to pay me?Is it a false claimed?
No. They can pay with their credit/debit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover) — all without having a PayPal account.
Official link to the FAQ.
It can be very complicated, PayPal automates whatever possible as it handles gigantic amount of clients (adding 1 million new accounts per month). We guess it will automatically determine the threshold for forced-account registration and verification, by judging on the goods you are selling, the registered country of your account, the pattern of your account usage, the legislation involved and tons of other.
Now here's the proof that you can't really just pay with PayPal without an account (when it comes to certain transaction, the illustrated is a live page utilizing PayPal web payments standard running on subscription)
Here's another screen shots showing... certain credit cards might not get through for certain type of payment too!
Here's what it looks like on PayPal's all-new Adaptive Payments API (Click images to enlarge.) However, We are not certain whether the UI will be implemented for traditional PayPal integration method like PayPal Website Payment Standard, PayPal Express Checkout etc.
Usual Adaptive Payments Authorization Page
Adaptive Payments Authorization Page with Guest Payment option
Adaptive Payments Authorization Page with Guest Payment and optional PayPal Account Registration
Adaptive Payments Preapproval Authorization Page with new PayPal Account Registration option
