2Checkout vs. PayPal

I will preface this post with a disclaimer.  I am not an expert with regards to merchant accounts or payment processors, nor am I an expert with regards to internet companies that accept credit cards or use third party vendors to process their payments.  However, I am an expert when it comes to my websites, the products I sell and the conversion rate that I track on a daily basis.

For nearly 15 years, I have used the internet in some fashion to generate sales, either directly or indirectly.  About six months ago, I put an eBook online, with hopes of capturing a predetermined amount of sales, resulting in a predetermined amount of revenue.  As always, I used my trusty PayPal account to process the credit card orders. Although sales were good during the first two months, they slowly dwindled to just a few orders each month. Although I had a few customers contact me with regards to their credit cards being rejected by PayPal, I didn’t think a lot of it.  But, as sales began to decline, I started giving it some thought.  So, I decided to purchase my own eBook from my very own website with my own valid credit card.  DECLINED!  Ok I thought, must be a fluke . . . so I tried my bank card.  DECLINED! I started doing some research as to why two valid credit cards, with plenty of room to purchase an inexpensive eBook, would be declined. From what I could determine, it had something to do with the PayPal servers and the amount of traffic at that particular moment.  Basically the servers were on overload and couldn’t find the time to process anymore credit cards.

About a week later, at a different time of day, I repeated the same process described above and was declined again.  Now in between these two rejections, I was able to complete a successful transaction, using one of the same credit cards that had previously been declined.  Now concerned that many of my potential customers were experiencing the same thing, I conducted a Google search for 2Checkout vs. PayPal.  Wow, the amount of information was almost overwhelming.  As I read page after page of pros and cons for both companies, the argument for or against either seemed to center around the cost to use 2Checkout vs. the cost of PayPal.  Granted, 2Checkout does charge a one time upfront fee and their per transactions fees are a bit higher, however what’s the cost of customers not being able to complete transactions with PayPal?

Fast forward to four days after switching over to 2Checkout.com and my sales have increased by almost double.  Coincidence?  I’ll let you know in about a month.