Sunday, November 21, 2010

Paypal Premier/Business account

I knew for long that if you wanted to sell goods via Paypal i.e. those who want to add 'Pay through Paypal' button to their websites and they receive regular payments from their services or products then you MUST have a business account. I vaguely knew this was due to a cap on the transaction amount or else you can get banned. So today a client of mine was insisting that her 'Premier account' should be enough to conduct e-commerce business. Recently I had done some work for another website where the client had setup a business Paypal account, so I personally wanted to know what was the rules behind Premier and Business accounts.
Here is what I got from an Ebay guide (http://reviews.ebay.com/PayPal-Premier-Versus-Business-Account_W0QQugidZ10000000003441164) :
Business Accounts and Premier Accounts both offer the same basic features.

The only distinction between the two is:

•Business Accounts allow members to conduct business under a company or group name
•Premier Accounts allow members to use their individual name
•The Multi-User (Secondary Users feature is available only to Business Accounts)
PayPal Premier accounts should be created by any individual who may anticipate surpassing the monthly limitations placed by PayPal on Personal accounts. Personal accounts that accept credit or debit card payments are assessed a transaction fee. See our "fee schedule" by clicking the "Fees" link at the bottom of any PayPal page for more information. Personal accounts have a limit on the number of credit or debit card funded payments received per year. To view your Personal account limit, log in to your PayPal account and click the View Limits link.

PayPal Business accounts should be created by formal businesses which are either Sole Proprietor, Corporation or Organizations that maintain a federally issued Tax ID Number and wish to provide only their business name, address and telephone number to their customers.

Again, the distinction between the two account types is whether or not you appear to your customers as a valid business or an individual.