Series 2, Article 2
A PayPal account will make it possible for you to quickly and easily make and receive payments without having to repeatedly enter credit card or banking information, or without having to wait for the sending or receiving of checks or money orders.The reason PayPal is the preferred payment method and safe option of choice for transactions for many on-line buyers and sellers (including large and small retailers from eBay to your neighborhood shops) is that it allows you to send payments securely online using a credit card or bank account without the recipient ever seeing your credit card or bank account information.
It is also free to sign up! When paying with Paypal, you have no transaction fees. When selling on-line and accepting PayPal as a method of payment, you simply pay a 2.9% + $0.30 fee on any item you sell up to $3,000, which is comparable to a credit card fee.
To sign up for a Paypal account, simply go to www.Paypal.com and fill out the registration form.
Follow these steps:
- Enter your email address in the first box. The email address that you provide here will be both your PayPal ID (you’ll use it to log into PayPal and to receive payments from PayPal) and the email address on which you’ll receive PayPal notifications. WRITE THIS EMAIL ADDRESS DOWN (since it is your PayPal ID) AND KEEP IT SOMEWHERE WHERE YOU WILL NEVER LOSE IT.
- Enter the password you’d like to use for PayPal into the next two boxes, again taking care that both of the passwords that you enter match. WRITE THIS PASSWORD DOWN AND KEEP IT SOMEWHERE WHERE YOU WILL NEVER LOSE IT.
- Enter your first and last names where indicated. It is imperative that your names as supplied here be real, since they must match the payment information on your checking and credit card accounts in order for PayPal to conduct transactions for you.
- Select your country of residence from the drop-down list.
- Enter your street address, city, state or province, and zip or postal code address in the relevant areas, taking care once again to ensure that the data you enter here matches the data your bank/account holders have on file for you.
- Enter your complete phone number.
- Do your best to read the unusual text provided to you near the bottom of the form and enter it into the code box to verify to PayPal that you are a human and not an Internet bot/robot.
Carefully read PayPal’s user agreement and privacy policy by clicking on their respective links.
When you’re done with the form, click the “Agree and Sign Up” button to proceed with your PayPal registration.
Once you’ve successfully submitted your PayPal registration form, you’ll see another welcome page confirming the creation of your account. At this point you should link one of your bank accounts to your PayPal account to enable you to send and receive payments easily and conveniently.
- Click on the “Add Bank Account” link to link a checking or savings account to your PayPal account (recommended). Or click on the “Add Credit/Debit Card” link to link a credit card account to your PayPal account. Linking a checking or savings account will make it possible for you to receive payments via PayPal for any items that you sell on eBay and to have these payments quickly and easily transferred to the bank account in question. (Whichever you choose to add now, you can always add additional checking, savings, or credit card accounts later by visiting PayPal directly at www.paypal.com, logging in, and adding the accounts in question to your profile.)
- A checking or savings account is likely the first type of account you’ll want to link to your PayPal account. This form simply collects information about your bank account so that it can be linked to your PayPal account. Here’s how to complete the form:
- Enter your bank’s branch or official name, as it appears on your checks or bank statements, in the “Bank Name” box.
- Tell PayPal whether the account you’re linking is a checking account or a savings account.
- Enter the routing number for the bank or branch where your account is housed in the box labeled “Routing Number.” If you don’t know this number, you can find it on the checks you have for the account in question; it is the 10-digit number at the lower-left.
- Enter the account number for this account in the boxes labeled “Account Number.” Once again you’re asked for the same information twice so that PayPal can be sure you’ve typed it correctly; be sure to enter it carefully and correctly each time.
- Click the “Continue” button to confirm your account and proceed to the next step.
- Follow any additional directions from PayPal
Once you’ve entered your account information and clicked on the “Continue” button, PayPal will provide you with a simple set of instructions for confirming that the account you’ve supplied is indeed yours, steps that vary with from case to case and with the type of account provided.
Most of the time, PayPal will make one or several small deposits to your account in the days following your registration. Your job in such cases is to record the amounts of these deposits, return to PayPal directly, log in using your email address and password, and enter the amounts of these deposits to prove to PayPal that the account in question is indeed yours, is active, and that you currently have access to it.
Whatever the directions supplied, follow them carefully to confirm the linking of your checking, savings, or credit card account to your PayPal account, so that you can send and receive payments on eBay quickly and easily.
Congratulations! You’re done!
That’s all there is to it. Once you’ve completed each of the steps above, you’re ready to begin life as an eBay trader, buying and selling with ease. As a final note, take care not to forget the eBay nickname/user ID you chose, the email address that you supplied to PayPal, or the password(s) that you supplied to both eBay and PayPal in order to protect your accounts. Should you forget any of these (as many, many have over the years), you may find it difficult or impossible ever to resume trading on eBay/PayPal.