PayPal Payments Lets Small Business Take Your Money Any Way They Want

 by Emily Price

Wednesday PayPal announced the next move in its revamp of its product line: PayPal Payments, which lets you take customers’ money in person as well as online and on mobile devices.

“The heart of PayPal is small business,” Peter Karpas, North American VP of customer engagement told Mashable. “The lines between online and offline and mobile are totally blurring for them. This comprehensive revamp of our products allows small businesses to get paid however they do business.”

Labeled Standard, Advanced, and Pro, each tier offers some of the same basic functionality. Payments can be accepted in 25 different currencies from 190 countries, and can be taken from PayPal accounts as well as via credit card or check using PayPal’s new PayPal Here app.

PayPal announced PayPal Here earlier this month. Going up against Square in the mobile payments space, the app offers businesses a card reader so they can accept on-the-spot payments. The app can also accept checks by taking a photo of them, and can be used for invoicing and keeping track of cash payments as well.

Customers who use PayPal can also check in to a business using the traditional PayPal app on their phones, and pay for purchases by simply saying “Put it on PayPal” and having the merchant select his or her name and photo from their own merchant phone or tablet.

SEE ALSO: PayPal Here Accepts Payments From iPhone [HANDS-ON]

The Standard tier of PayPal payments is free for businesses to use. The Advanced tier adds the ability for customers to pay for purchases without leaving your website for $5 per month, and the Pro tier lets you design and host your own checkout pages for full control, as well as accept credit card via phone, fax, and mail.

PayPal checkouts are also optimized now for mobile, so when customers visit a small business’ website to make a purchase, they don’t have to pinch-to-zoom or manipulate the website in order to complete their purchase.

Payments via PayPal were previously called “website payments standard” and “website payments pro,” and as of today PayPal is also dropping the “website” terminology from the name. Comparing it to Apple’s decision to remove “computer” from its named in 2007, Karpas says the company is dropping the website terminology to indicate that the company is moving to accepting payments however you do business.

Let us know what you think about PayPal Payments in the comments.