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Discussion on: PayPal Payment Services Overview

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angelleye profile image
Drew Angell • Edited

Looks like you guys are using Shopify for your store, and it does include Stripe for Credit Cards and PayPal as another option for payment. In my experience you would most likely save some money on fees if you went with PayPal Pro for the credit cards instead of Stripe. They both start at 2.9%, but with PayPal Pro you get a discount depending on your monthly volume.

  • > $3,000/mo = 2.5%
  • > $10,000/mo = 2.2%
  • > $100,000/mo = 1.9%
  • Higher volumes can get even lower rates through Braintree (Powered by PayPal).

For the memberships, the $1.00 and $10.00 items should be processed using a PayPal Micropayments account. This will save you money on the fees. A standard PayPal account is 2.9% + 30¢ where-as a MicroPayments account is 5% + 5¢.

For the $1.00 charge the regular fee would be 33¢ where-as the micropayments fee would be 10¢.

For the $10.00 charge the regular fee would be 59¢ where-as the micropayments fee would be 55¢.

At $12.00 the fee is the same for each (65¢) and above $12.00 you'll want to use the standard PayPal account.

I would recommend using the REST API for Express Checkout with Smart Payment Buttons enabled, and you can build logic around your API credentials so that it uses one PayPal account or another depending on the transaction amount so that you always get the best fee.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns about that.

Side Note
If you're reading this and you're using WooCommerce, you might be interested in my PayPal for WooCommerce plugin. It makes setting all of this up very quick and easy, and it's completely free.