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Paypal is the world leader in online transactions in sending, receiving and paying money across the globe. It is like a bank account on the web, although there you will not get any interest for the balance that you have in the account. Paypal is more of an online wallet for you to pay and get paid with just a simple click of the mouse. Paypal became more famous and well established after it partnered and been protected by leading online store, EBay.

Still the World-leading way to checkout in the internet

Right now, Paypal is the number one as well as the most preferred company for transacting money online. It set a standard for transactions and every new alternative company will compare their features with Paypal.

Issues with Paypal

As time went by, more and more unsatisfied Paypal customer emerged that even led to litigation and court losses. Most of their complaints are Paypal’s actions of freezing their money for no rhyme or reason; in accordance to their Terms and Conditions, they have the right to hold your money. When you have an account with Paypal, the company controls your money altogether.

There are also those problems with their fees particularly those withdrawal transactions to your credit or debit cards. Their current fee is $4 that is quite huge already; it wants its users to withdraw rarely and just accumulate their funds to avoid paying $4 per transactions. This became the start of those cases where Paypal froze hold some users’ money; others were accused of having fraudulent transactions and bad feedbacks in EBay. Furthermore, for small businesses or those who doesn’t transact online that much, Paypal’s fees is very high and expensive.

Any Alternatives?

There are new companies emerging that you can use aside from Paypal. Some of these have very low fees compared to that of Paypal and funds will reflect on your account faster. However, most of them are not applicable to all countries; some are only good for those residing in UK, US and Canada. Nevertheless, here are the top three alternatives to Paypal.

Google Checkout is Google’s answer to Paypal and envisioned to be Paypal’s top rival in e-commerce. With the Google as its parent company with remarkable reputation and strong foundation, the users can be more confident in relying their businesses to them. Google Checkout has services that Paypal fails to give to its customers like free membership, and good and fast customer service. However, Google Checkout is temporarily available in 10 countries and still not included in eBay.

Moneybookers is a London-based company that is accredited by eBay. Much more, their service is available in all countries around the world. Signing up is fast and easy and more and more useful features are introduced to become at par with Paypal. Unlike Paypal, your funds will not be threatened to be frozen in the long run and their service fee is cheaper; free for receiving and sending person-person is only 1% of the total amount. Also, their interface is user friendly and very easy to use especially for first time users.

AlertPAy is a Canadian company that offers the same package as Paypal though you cannot use it with your transactions in eBay. What makes it a top competitor to Paypal is that it is free to use and the fees are relatively cheaper than that of Paypal. You can send money and pay by using your credit card and available in all countries. A slight problem with AlertPay is in its verification process for your account with them; you have to send documents to their headquarters and with today’s modern way of communicating, it is quite irrelevant and rather inconvenient.

Ikobo is another US-based company that offers money transfer services and its greatest advantage is zero set up fees, iKard and low transaction charges. iKard is a kind of debit card which the merchants can use to withdraw money from iKobo account ans also allows the merchants to receive credit card payments at discounted rate. However, it differs from paypal as it is not associated with any kind of banking system. Paypal develops relationships with banking system, whereby the merchants can transfer money from the paypal account to their bank accounts.

Another alternative to paypal is eGold and it is fast becoming a great online digital currency that is regulated by a US-based company (Florida) where one can change e-gold to regular money by the click of mouse. In this system, customers can buy units of gold either with a credit card or by a wire transfer, and it can then be transferred to any other e-gold account by simply clicking on the net. Although e-gold is accounted by weight, the e-gold payment system allows spend to be expressed in terms of eight major national currencies. This payment service is extremely cost effective with low transaction fees even for high amount. In this global payment services, one need to check on the exchange rate to e-gold before going for the transaction. However, the other disadvantage of this online transaction system is that the total money is more controlled by illicit elements and by unscrupulous manner.

It is the Western Union money that is most preferred choice of payment service all across the globe being the oldest and the most credible brand. It simply stays very close to all customers in their own language with the help of a wide network of agents unlike the payment service of paypal. Their services extend from consumer to consumer, consumer to business as well provide with simple financial tools such as prepaid cards and money orders.

To end up, Paypal is not the only company that you can use for your online transactions. There are also ikobo, eGold and western union as well, and although they have worldwide presence they are more valid in countries where paypal is not existent. Some of their services and products may not suit you and gladly, there are new companies that can supplement or even complement Paypal’s services making them good alternatives.