The blog of BaggieAggie, designer of bags, gadget cases and other fabulous accessories handmade in Wales. Sprinkled with recipes, gardening chat, the odd piece of short fiction, and anything else that inspires (or annoys!) me. So pull up a comfy chair and stay a while.


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Friday 6 July 2012

Paypal Micropayments account - pay lower fees!

Fun and funky 'Mushrooms' keyring / wrist fob in black, pink, red, blue, yellow and more.

As most online sellers know, charges for a normal Paypal macropayments account (if your monthly sales are less than £1,500) are 3.4% + 20p.

What Paypal doesn’t shout from the rooftops, and which I only found out when I registered as a designer on Ravelry to sell my felted bag patterns, is that they also offer a micropayments option for sellers of low-value items.  The charges for this are 5% + 5p.

So, if an item (including p&p) sells for £3, for example, this is what you would pay in fees:

Macropayments: £3 x 3.4% = 10p, plus 20p = 30p
Micropayments: £3 x 5% = 15p, plus 5p = 20p

A big difference, especially when you work out what you might sell over a year!
The breakeven point is somewhere between £9 and £10, so if most of your items (including p&p) sell for £9 or less, it might be worth converting your existing premier or business account from macro to micro by following the link at the foot of this post.  The lower your prices, the more money you'll save.

Alternatively, you could open a second Paypal account. Paypal allows each person to hold two accounts, one macropayment and one micropayment (very useful for eBay sellers with a mix of high and low prices) but it's not possible to link them both to the same bank account, sadly.

To switch your current Paypal account to micropayments, follow the link, click 'Signup', choose your country from the drop-down menu, and take it from there.  If at any time your circumstances change and a micropayments account is no longer viable, you can simply switch back.

(If you've found this post useful, or know someone who would benefit, Blogger has made it easy to share with friends via Twitter, Facebook, email and more. Just scroll down to the box below this post and click the relevant icon/s.)

https://micropayments.paypal-labs.com/
NOTE: Ignore the $ figures you'll see when you click - these only apply to US sellers.  The figures I've given in this post are correct at time of writing.  It seems we poor Brits always pay more for everything!

20 comments:

  1. Thanks for this, I sell needles at £1.65 and the charges are high!

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  2. What a great idea, but when I clicked on the link the paypal page comes up, but nothing happens when I click on sign up. I cannot find it anywhere in my paypal account to sign up for it either. Help..... please xx

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  3. Sadly, there's no way of doing it direct from our Paypal accounts - you'd think there would be, wouldn't you!

    I've just tested the link with both my browsers (IE and Firefox) and it's working fine. When you click on Signup, a thin horizontal box should appear, with a drop-down arrow on the righthand side. Did that not happen?

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  4. I'm so glad you mentioned Firefox. I have a Mac computer and normally use safari as the browser, but have found some things just do not work. So when you mentioned Firefox I went back in and tried it and hey presto it has worked. Thank you soooooo much. Just got to wait for a sale now to see what the changes would be.

    xx

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  5. That's interesting, no good to me with my bears though, none of the mohair one's are under £10. You have a lovely bright blog.

    Polly, Pud Bears and Friends

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  6. Thanks for this info :) I've linked this post to my new blog at http://alisonmooredesigns.blogspot.com/

    Thanks again! :)

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  7. Thanks, Ally! The more people that see it, the better. :) x

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  8. so usefull! thanks so much for spreading the word.

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  9. This is interesting! I sell a mix of items with a similar mix of prices. I am not the biggest fan of paypal to start with, and as you have already said, they do not shout the micropayment option from the roof tops. I will also link your post to my blog if thats ok.

    Forgot to say, your items are great - a real breath of fresh air so to speak!

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  10. Hi,
    thanks for this! I've just opened a Folksy shop and have had a few sales but I'm worried about the paypal fees. I already have a Premier Paypal account but it looks like you need to signup for either an Express Checkout 0r Website Payments Standard service- can I do this with only a Folksy shop rather than a blog? Or have I got it wrong?
    Thanks, really appreciate it!
    Jenny

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  11. Just got an email to say that I'm now paying micropayments, hooray! Thanks so much for the heads up :)

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  12. Sorry, Jenny - only just spotted your message. Glad you got it sorted! :) x

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  13. Great! Found this via your link on the Folksy forum.. thanks for posting! I just switched to micropayments.. fab.... : )

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  14. Brilliant, thank you. I've applied. Link didn't work with Chrome, but did with Explorer :)

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  15. It's been 18 months since I posted this, so thought it was time to resurrect it for those who haven't seen it before. Hope it helps! :)

    Rosie. x

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  16. Hello, I have come over from the Folksy blog forum and am very glad I did. This is really interesting and I am going to check it out. Very intersting!

    Sarah xx

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  17. Just made the switch! Can't believe I didn't know about this before! Thank you for the information. :D

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  18. You're very welcome. :)

    Rosie. x

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  19. Thank you very much for this info its greatly appreciated! I have signed up today, thank you for spreading the word! Nicola x

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  20. Thanks for the posting this, I was trying to find out how to switch to micropayments and this gave me the help I needed.

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