If you have started a new Ecommerce website or you are thinking about it, you should consider using Paypal for your credit card processor. There are several advantages to using Paypal. Some of them are not readily apparent or obvious when you are doing your research. While it’s not the ultimate solution, it is excellent if this is your first site. First of all, installing Paypal on your site is easy. I like easy, it makes my life less complicated. The last thing I need to do is to learn something new. Learning new stuff that I eventually will not use, steals my time. The credit card processing field is loaded with competition. You can get this service from just about anywhere, including your local bank. Set up always tends to be difficult and you need to integrate your bank account in from the beginning of the set up process. I have noticed one unique concept about banks. They always get their money and it’s not always convenient. You generally have to wait for them to set up your account and wait some more for the details. Getting the processing up and running on your site took me two weeks once, you can have that. The Paypal API is very simple to sign up for and straightforward to set up on your website. You can be up and running in no time. One of the great things about Paypal is that it is becoming more and more accepted around the world. It started out being a popular way to pay for purchases on EBay, but has expanded to have a larger impact. There are some airlines that you can use Paypal to purchase your tickets. I would have to imagine that soon all the airlines will accept it. Using it online is becoming more and more acceptable as well. The best part of using Paypal is that people do not always know they are using it. There are some people that are still skittish about online purchases. Some would rather just trust their regular visa or MasterCard. The thing about Paypal is that they can use their regular credit cards and they will not know that they are using the Paypal interface. Most shopping carts will give you the choice to offer Paypal as a payment choice on the site as well. In this case then the user would know they are using it. The cons of using Paypal are more evident the more successful your business becomes. When you start doing some significant numbers online is when you want to start trimming the fat off of your charges. Switching from Paypal to a regular merchant account now makes more sense. The benefit of doing this that you might have some more cash flow and it becomes easier to just outsource the whole process of setting this it up on your site. This not only saves you time but also the headache. However you will find that you will want to keep offering Paypal as a payment option because it gives customers another way of paying which increases your chances of conversion.