PayPal is the kind of company that has gotten a thundering reputation. Consider the most famous of all online auction sites, and you will most likely remember that doing business without using PayPal is next to impossible. Sellers and buyers alike have realized that using PayPal is a good idea, not simply because it makes transactions quick, easy, and convenient, but also because it offers a modicum of safety in an Internet landscape that may be fraught with false claims, bad credit cards, and fraudulent transactions.



In the past, many an auction required the buyer to send to the seller a personal check. Once this was received ? two to three days ? the seller would deposit it and wait for the funds to clear, which for out of state checks usually took about five to 10 business days. After the transfer of the funds was verified, the seller would then send out the item. Of course, if the seller was a fraud, there was precious little the buyer could do since the transaction had already gone through the account. Certified checks were a bit faster, but once again they required the buyer to have extraordinary faith in the seller, and also necessitated a trip to the grocery store or bank to purchase such a check.

When PayPal entered the scene these two forms of payment became virtually obsolete. Granted, some sellers still offer their buyers the ability to purchase with a personal or certified check, but the majority of buyers do not want to bother with these kinds of payment any more. In addition to the foregoing, since PayPal permits payment processing even with the help of credit cards, everyone wins!

In today's eBay market place, for example, there are a variety of stores that compete for business and as such they are set up to take credit card payments, but the average the seller does not have an account set up with MasterCard or Visa, and PayPal comes to the rescue by permitting the seller to accept the buyer's credit cards simply via its payment processing service.

A lot of criticism has been made against the company, in part because so many hackers have tried their hands at cracking the codes. Some SPAM messages look remarkably realistic and therefore have caused unsuspecting customers to reveal passwords and other identifiable information that has granted third parties access to their accounts, but by and large this is a rare occurrence. PayPal goes to great length to ensure that clients are aware of the safety precautions taken by the company to prevent these kinds of problems. Similarly, there were some lawsuits brought against PayPal's business practices with respect to business dispute resolution procedures. At this point in time the problems have been resolved satisfactorily and once again the question whether using PayPal is a good idea can be answered with a resounding ?yes?!