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.
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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!
