Some months ago I had a buyer ask if they could pay me using HyperWallet - the Canadian answer to PayPal. Well it was free to sign up, no cost to me to accept the "beamed" cash, so I signed up and that payment went smoothly enough that I figured I would show in my listings that I accept it. The next step was that I figured if I was going that route I had better be prepared to accept credit card payments through them, so I got set up for that too.
Since then, I had just one guy want to pay me through HyperWallet and that was another cash payment which went smoothly. Then about two weeks ago I had two buyers within a day of each other tell me that they wanted to pay me by credit card through HW. I said "fine, go ahead" which was when I learned that I have to go there and issue an invoice for the sale, which is a bit inconvenient, but oh well! Then I get emails from these two people saying that they've paid the invoices, why haven't I emailed to acknowledge receipt? I check my HW account and there's nothing there so I emailed support who advised me that on average it takes them 2 business days to approve credit card payments. Of course these people both paid on a Thursday night, so it was going to be after the weekend before they cleared. Well, some payments must be cleared mighty fast if they average 2 business days because both of these payments took 4 business days, so it's now almost a week since my buyers paid. And another nice little stinger in the email telling me the payments are approved and credited to my account - the funds are frozen for a further 5 business days before I can cash out!
So, what would have given me instant payment through PayPal takes almost 2 weeks with HW. And then there are the fees! Any eBay auction payment is 40cents plus 3.95% (plus GST, although that comes back anyway) which didn't sound a lot different than PayPal, but I compared two identical transactions, each for US$255 plus shipping plus GST and the PayPal charges were $8.53 versus $11.60 with HW (and no, that doesn't include the GST).
Now of course I'm seeing how fast I can pull any reference to HW from my listings! I thought PayPal charges were pretty steep, but man, HW makes 'em look almost reasonable!
Well, I feel better for having unloaded all of that - if you're not accepting HW now, I suggest you stay well away - I know I will be!
Chris.
