Alternative to Paypal "Buy buttons" for European-based companies?

I did a pretty thorough review of the players in this market, and although there are alternatives they're all worse than Paypal.<p>The chances of Paypal suspending your account depends a lot of what you're doing with it, if you're operating in the b2b space or if you're selling a product then you shouldn't have any problem.<p>Most of the companies that have had accounts suspended have tended to be doing non-standard things (asking for donations, acting as payment middle-men, etc.), if you're going to be doing something weird get Paypal to ok it upfront and put a note on your account.<p>You can also sweep money from Paypal to your bank on a daily basis to minimize the impact.<p>My second choice after Paypal would be 2co, although 2co have some pretty bizarre requirements on the UI of your purchase screen, which in practice a lot of vendors just ignore. But it made me hesitant about using them.<p>Depending on the nature of your customer base Amazon or Google payments might work for you as well (but these both require your customers to have an account with the respective provider).

I run a UK based company, and use three different 'Buy buttons' on my website - that is: 1. Paypal 2. Google Checkout 3. Fast Spring<p>I've not had any problems with any of them. Paypal and Google Checkout are comparable in price, I think its about 4% cut.<p>FastSpring is a bit more, about 8% I think, but it has the benefit of handling tax complications - ie. it checks where the seller is, and charges VAT accordingly. Plus it handles currency conversion so the buyer can pay in their local currency.

For digital goods and subscriptions try Simplified Ecommerce. I'm the founder, here's the basics:<p><a href="http://SimplifiedEcommerce.com/aboutus" rel="nofollow">http://SimplifiedEcommerce.com/aboutus</a><p>Integrations as easy as PayPal "BuyNow" links, beautiful customizable payment pages, affiliate marketing like ClickBank and recurring subscription billing without any programming or complicated API's.<p>International companies are welcome and receive weekly settlements via Bank Wire (US companies settle with ACH/ direct debit to their bank account).<p>You can get started right away without going through the long, complicated pain of applying and qualifying for a merchant account. Then as your business grows if you get a merchant account, the transition is seamless, as easy as submitting your new merchant account credentials. All your integrations, products, subscription plans, affiliate relationships, custom payment pages, data, reporting... stay intact.<p>and YOUR customers' data is YOURS, securely stored in our PCI level 1 compliant tokenized vault and is fully portable.<p>I'd love to hear your questions and feedback!<p>Colin@SimplifiedEcommerce.com

I hope that one will emerge similarly to how Thawte was created to avoid cryptography export restrictions. And the founder could get very rich too and spend the money on something as cool as Ubuntu, too.

Sort of. <a href="http://www.clickbank.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.clickbank.com/</a> works fine for European vendors (certainly UK, at least) and they have a good affiliate system built-in. The key downside is you must very specifically define your 'products' through them - you can't just set up arbitrary calls to take arbitrary amounts of money, as you can with your PayPal buttons.

FastSpring is all-inclusive and works with companies all over the world. Order pages are translated into 18 languages, end customers can pay using foreign currencies, VAT is properly collected when required, etc. For SaaS services, try SaaSy.com

Keep you eyes open on Merchii.com - launching the beta soon. Enables secure e-commerce on <i>any</i> website in a few minutes. The pitch on the site now is not the entire picture.

The horror-stories of Paypal are because of the massive market that this company has. Considering the sheer number of businesses and individuals using this, it's natural that offences get publicised. Personally I have no problem using Paypal at all, and as ig1 notes I'd only expect issues if you fit into a pattern of suspicious activity (sudden large transactions etc).

There's a reason people still use Paypal even after all the horror stories: there is no alternative.

What about <a href="http://moneybookers.com" rel="nofollow">http://moneybookers.com</a> ?

I highly recommend AlertPay.com<p>It's PayPal minus the pain

www.2checkout.com

You could give coinb.in a go if you wanted to accept via bitcoins rather than USD or EUR.<p><a href="http://coinb.in/" rel="nofollow">http://coinb.in/</a>