To make money on the web, you have to have some kind of online payment processing service. It’s just not practical for most people trying to run a home based business to take checks, or money orders.

What’s the most popular online payment processing service right now? Well, it’s still PayPal, for all kinds of reasons. It costs nothing to get started and you can have a payment button on your website within a few minutes of first signing up. You can literally be taking payments within an hour – much quicker if you type fast!

For most people starting out with online sales, especially of information products, it’s a good choice. Not the only choice, but a good one.

Just be aware that there will be people who

can’t, or won’t, use PayPal and it’s possible that you’ll upset them just by choosing to use PayPal for your online payment processing.

I say that because I’ve just had a message from one person who feels that we’ve let them down by not offering direct credit card payments. When I read why they can’t use PayPal I was surprised that they’ve blaming us.

Seems PayPal don’t let them have an account because of their association with ‘adult’ websites. And they believe I should feel sorry for their predicament. They actually think I should have started my answer with an apology for the predicament they’re in.

Now it may be disappointing to them not to be able to get what they want when they want it, but since their inability to use PayPal is entirely down to their own actions that’s just how it is. They can’t even use their card via PayPal so they’re completely out of luck.

So what is an online merchant to do? Offer every kind of payment processor there is? Just on the slim chance that one customer might not be able to pay one way or another?

You will never completely meet the needs of 100% of your potential customers

My own view is simple: I won’t ever be able to meet the needs of everyone who visits my sites. For some people what I offer just won’t be suitable. I can’t make it all work for everyone, so I might as well put as much effort into making it work for the people it does suit. After all, they will be my customers and while I want to encourage as many visitors as possible to buy, chances are good that most people who visit won’t buy from me. That’s just a fact of online life.

But the larger question is how many times do I lose a sale and never find out about it? How many additional sales would I enjoy if I offered ‘traditional’ credit card processing with a merchant account? How much would it cost me to change my offering so that someone who wants my offerings is able to pay for them, no matter what problem they have?

For each online seller those questions will have different answers. Ultimately, asking the questions and analyzing the answers will give you a clue whether you need to get a proper merchant account, but it has to offer a return on investment to make it worthwhile. And 1 customer complaining is probably not enough to tip the balance.

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