'PayPal Says Ecommerce Is Held Back in Canada'

[momcqueen]

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y17/m05/i15/s02

[femmefan1946]

How do they define a 'small business'?

In the USA Small Businesses can have up to 400 employees.

I'd fault Paypal for neglecting this market. Many truly small businesses, with fewer than 25 employees including part-timers, are not making enough profit to support another payment method.

And many are happier taking cheques from their customers, especially wholesale customers, avoiding those pesky merchant card fees.

[momcqueen]

Yes, the inference by Payapl with this to me is that if Canadian sellers are not expanding to online sales which include by extension payment procession by paypal, they must be a pile of backwards-thinking hicks. Not that paypal hasn't done enough for outreach, or offered enough temptation to make it happen.

Perhaps this 'study' should have been kept an internal document to be used for research and development. What should Paypal be doing differently to woo the uniquely-Canadian market? 

Or perhaps Canadians trust companies like paypal less than do their American counterparts: I'd need to the Paypal site to operate as flawlessly as my financial institution's site, for example, before I'd throw my lot in with Paypal completely. It does not. 

[femmefan1946]

Square and other anonymized payment companies are taking over a fair share of online and 'flea market' payments.

Even the credit card companies are getting better about wifi based payments.

I first noticed this at a craft show in the Indian Affairs building where I was chatting with a jewelry seller. She told me she had greatly increased her sales at powwows (often held in isolated locations) since she had obtained a wifi enabled cc processor.

And the SF convention I deal with takes payments through something called EventBee.

I don'tthink Paypal will die- it's not the 800 lb gorilla it used to be, and it doesn't seem to be as flexible as newer entities- but it will probably hold on to a reasonable market share if only because people are used to it.

I wish eBay would lose the 'guest' buyers though. The interface between them. eBay and payments seems confusing and unfriendly. I just told another guest to call his card about a chargeback because he had no confirmation from anyone about his purchase. (Probably Chinese so there's another person who will never be back.)