Ugh, you want 3.1% of My Money?
If you are like me you hate giving up a percentage of your payments to Paypal. It’s almost like working for free when you see the cumulative effect of it. But I keep it and use it because it’s a convenience for my clients and I’d almost – mind you, I said “almost” – would prefer to give them a cut of my income than to drive to the bank to deposit paper checks.
Recently I discovered Intuit Payment Network (IPN), which is very much like Paypal with a few notable differences.
Major Bonuses of Intuit’s Payment Network
- No high, crazy fees like Paypal – get your money for a mere $.50. $1,000 payment? No $29.30 in fees as you pay with Paypal…just the $.50!
- Same “send payment to email convenience” that Paypal users have come to love
- Payments are deposited directly into your bank account instead of being “held” by Paypal (which you then have to submit a transfer request and that takes 3-4 days to show up in your checking account)
How do they manage to keep their fees so low? My only guess is that because they do not allow payments to be made with a credit card – only a bank account. Personally, I don’t use the pay via credit card method on Paypal anyhow so for me to make a payment to a vendor using IPN is not an inconvenience at all.
I’ve already been spreading this great find with many other Virtual Assistants that I work with or am friends with and everyone has had great feedback about it.
If you are a QuickBooks user and have Billing Solutions IPN will also sync all of your payments received in your QuickBooks file. (ooohhhh, can we say reduced bookkeeping time?)
Honestly, what’s not to love about this?
Click here to see more details and to sign up.
If you are using Intuit’s Payment Network add your comment below as to what you like about it.
Thanks for the info Michelle. I am going to check Intuit out. I think most people still use paypal since it is so well known and trusted.
Danny – I think that will be Intuit’s biggest hurdle is the fact that Paypal has been around for so long and is nearly a household name nowdays. Luckily Intuit is a well-known brand so hopefully they will gain more market share as word continues to spread about their super low fees.
I just checked the Intuit website, but I still can’t decide whether it’s trustworthy or not. Although PayPal fees are without a doubt high, I would rather prefer staying with them. It is just that when it comes to money, one must be 100% sure and nothing should be left to chance. In a similar situation I had actually lost money. Good that they were just some twenty dollars.
Daniel:
I’ve been using the service for awhile now with others that provide services for me and they’ve all loved it. Intuit has a pretty good name for themselves with all of the QuickBooks and Quicken products so I (personally) feel quite “safe” with them.
You know, I hope that Inuit does well with this service. I like the idea of a strong competitor to PayPal to shake things up a bit.
Thanks!
Mark – I hope they do too. I’ve been using it with a number of people that provide services for me and they’ve all really enjoyed it.
Yeah, it’s good, very useful, thanks 🙂
I like Paypal’s service but it is expensive. Thanks for sharing some alternatives. Will be looking into Intuit
Susan – you are most welcome!
I hate paypal with a bright, purple passion. Not only do they have high fees, but recently they told me that they would now hold 10% of my receipts for 60 days in case of bad payments. Now wait a minute! Aren’t they insuring payment on the front end? It’s a colossal scam and I can’t wait to check out your Intuit solution…
Wow 10% for 60 days? Is that on all payments or just on echecks? Glad you now know about IPN – be sure to let me know what you think of it!
I have to say I didn’t know that Intuit had a payment service like this. Thanks for the article. I’ll have to consider using them. Paypal is highway robbery. 🙂
I feel for Todd. I’ve had a similar problem with Paypal putting a freeze on my money. I wonder if Intuit is any better it that regard.
Ron Lawson
Ecommerce Review
Ron – so far I haven’t heard of anyone that is using IPN having a problem with getting the funds. But I don’t know of anyone who has gotten huge payments with it either. Hope you check it out and switch!
Michelle,
PayPal’s fees are insane which is why I switched to Google Checkout. I use Google Checkout and I haven’t had any problems with it but Intuit’s fees are definitely lower. I’m hoping this Intuit adds a credit card feature soon because this is the only thing stopping me from making an immediate switch. Thanks for the info!
LaTosha:
Have you ever had problems with Google Checkout? I was going to switch to it last year but then several people told me it was very “clunky”.
If I see that Intuit offers a credit card option, I’ll let you know but I suspect the reason they can keep their fees as low as they do is because they don’t allow for credit cards. (that’s just my guess).
Hey Michelle,
I use First ACH (www.firstach.com). They have both ach (e-check) & credit card alternatives, allow recurring billing (which was important to me) and the interface is relatively easy to navigate. Looks like IPN is similar to the ach side of First ACH’s services.
Alternatives are the name of the game though, thanks for posting – I will be suggesting this as an alternative to my small business clients and may look into myself, especially if they add credit card processing.
Joyce – I will have to take a look at First ACH. I had not heard of that one.
Great. This is new to me. Now going to view the site and study in detail. Lemme make my account there. thanks.
Samantha – let me know how you like it!
Seems that this new system is quite cheap and effective. I have been with paypal from last couple of years and to be honest i don’t found any alternative and thus need to stick with them.
There have been cases when my account was suspended due to no valid reason, sellers don’t have any kind of security and the fees is breath taking!
Would adopt this system but before that would love to know some more reviews on it! Have bookmarked your blog therefore!! 🙂
yes, i hate paypal fees! thanks for sharing. i’m going to check out intuit!
A couple of other things to keep in mind. If you pay for the ability to do recurring monthly charges with PayPal (an extra $30 a month), you can’t have that monthly amount change more than 20 percent in a 6-month time period. That means if you have multiple tiers for pricing, your customers get stuck with whatever they signed up for. You can get around that requirement if you qualify for Reference Transactions, but PayPal is hesitant to approve smaller businesses for that.
Google Checkout is fairly easy to implement, but not if you are trying to track your sales through any affiliate referral programs. Also, your customers will have to have Google accounts in order to finish their orders. A nice thing, though, is Google takes the hit for chargebacks, instead of you, which is the case for normal merchant accounts.
Adam
I really hope that Intuit succeeds. Some competition to Paypal may not be bad at all. I also hope more services will switch to IPN globally
My experience to date with IntuitPaymentNetwork has not been good. I haven’t been using them for long so that should be taken into account. My first transaction was one week ago. The buyer paid within minutes of my payment request. So far I haven’t seen a dime. The payment went from “Pending” to “On Hold” and has stayed there ever since. I have called customer service and twice been promised that the hold will be lifted the next day — as of right now it is still on hold — without explanation. All that they are willing to tell me is that the customer agreement allows them to put transactions on hold for any reason. Meanwhile my customer has made payments of in excess of $44,000 and I have not received a dime of it — customer service lies about when the hold will be lifted and just tells me that they are within their rights to hold transactions. So far I have spend a significant amount of time waiting on hold for customer service and have nothing to show for it. I don’t much enjoy depositing paper checks at the bank but if I had done that I would have had the money long ago and I would have spent much less time doing it than I have spent so far waiting on hold. I have no idea how long this will go on and if/when I will ever get the money. I assume that I will get the money eventually, but the cost in personal time makes it VERY poor as a business solution. I am keeping an open mind at present but I am inclined to say that based on my early experience with them, they are not solving a problem, they ARE the problem and if and when I finally get the money I will have to ask whether or not it was really worth the effort and whether I have the stomach to trust them with any more payments. Right now I am tending to think not.
At this point I would recommend that if you are considering using IPN that you start small and don’t get too comfortable with the Intuit name. Make sure that you scrutinize the fine print of the contract before you subscribe to this service.
I generally like Intuit products and so this problem caught me off guard.
Since my last post the status of my first transaction has gone from “on hold” to “pending” as they suggested it would on my last call. This is a positive sign. According to what they said tomorrow morning it should go from “pending” to “completed” and the funds should be in my account. I am sending this update in the interests of fairness. Once all of my transactions complete successfully (or unsuccessfully) I will send an update indicating how long it all took, and a general overview of my thought on the process.
Since my last update all of my transactions — and some others besides — have been successfully completed. the initial startup issues seem to have been just that. I’m back to being enthusiastic about Intuit and their product — including this one. They could work a little on their customer communications but as of today I am happy.
Richard, you’ve had a bad experience with Intuit Payment Network? I’ve been using it for quite some time and I’ll admit I absolutely love it!