Paypal for villa owners

Posted on 16. Jul, 2009 in Advice

One of the things that came out of the discussion about the Morairaway rental scam was that holiday home rental customers might be looking to pay by credit card when they book their villa or apartment direct from the owner. It’s for this reason I have had a look into registering as a paypal “merchant” and I have found it was quite easy and staight forward. Now I could accept both credit card and paypal payments from customers. There are no setup or ongoing fees which makes it quite attractive to individual holiday home owners. Don’t use it, don’t pay for it.

Here’s my step by step guide :

1) Click here to go to the paypal sign up page

2) Choose your country and language e.g. UK and Englsish

3) Choose “premier” account since you need to accept payments. If you will have a high turnover or want to add paypal buttons to your website so people can pay you directly then choose a “business account”

4) Fill in your contact details and choose a strong password.

5) Now you get something about making payments – e.g you can choose a  card or bank account that you want to be linked to the account. You can skip this step by clicking “Go to my account”

6) For most holiday home owners payments by Email will be sufficient which means your done ! As soon as you have confirmed your email address by clicking the link in your inbox, you can ask people to pay you by paypal by going to the “request money” tab on your account page. You can choose to send an invoice or a “money request”. For more advanced uses you can add paypal buttons to your website so people can pay you directly from there.

Further Thoughts

• Have a think about whether you want to pass on some of the fees to your customer. Leading holiday companies, airlines and travel agents do in general charge a credit card fee so don’t be too shy about it.
• In order to reduce the fees, you may want to try and get just the deposit taken through paypal and arrange for the balance to be paid by bank transfer or in cash later.

Are you taking paypal or any other alternatives? Are your customers asking to be able to pay with credit card / debit card or paypal itself ? If you have any other tips, please leave a comment.