Paymate

[pickapresent13]

About 10 years ago when I used to sell on eBay, payment would be roughly 40% Direct Deposit, 30% Paypal, 20% Paymate, and 10% Money Order/Cash sent through mail.

These days, I find its about 95% Paypal and 5% Direct Deposit. I haven`t bothered with Paymate, cause I find most want to use Paypal. How many sellers still have Paymate as an alternate payment method for their buyers, and do myou get many people using it as their preferred payment method.

Wondering if its worth registering with them again and including it on my listings as a payment option

[haolove13]

I have a friend who uses paymate as he refuses to deal with paypal.

Many people do not have accounts as they have been sucked in to paypal.

The service from paymate is significantly better than paymate but ebay have squeezed them out of the link to encourage increased profits from paypal.

It is no longer really viable to worry about it as the paypal propoganda is all pervading.

"australias most preferred payment method"

"as compared to INDIVIDUAL credit card brands"

Means that every other visa brand and mastercard brand is compared to the all pervasive paypal. Not if you prefer Visa or mastercard  but ANZ visa, Westpac Visa, etc etc etc.

Lies, **bleep** lies and statistics.

[lyndal1838]

From a buyer's point of view Paymate is not as good as paypal when it comes to disputes.....it costs us money to open a dispute and there is a limit on the number of disputes you can open.

If you have not been selling recently you may find opening a Paymate account is difficult.......I believe you need a current selling record before they will allow you to open an account.

[cookmypotato]

I added Paymate as an payment option about 3 months ago, and I had almost forgotten about it until recently, when a buyer actually bought an item with it.

And as it turned out, even this one transaction never eventuated, as at first I thought the buyer had paid with an echeque, as it uses the same egg timer icon as the echeque icon. Very confusing, and it was only after about 4 days when the moneys hadn't cleared that I checked it again with the mouse cursor, that I saw that they had paid with Paymate and not by echeque.

So then, after a bit of a panic, I raced over to Paymate to check if the funds were in there, only to find that for some reason, my account wasn't properly activated and no moneys had been received, although I had been able to tick the Paymate box on all my listings, which supposedly, you should not be able to do unless your account is in fact properly activated. Go figure.

Anyway, the buyer was good about it and we just mutually cancelled the transaction, but it could have got ugly, and I decided at that time to cancel the Paymate option until it was fixed, which I have now done. I have to say though, I was a bit annoyed with the Paymate rep who refused to concede to my belief that, if my account wasn't properly activated, that I should not have been able to trade on ebay with it in the first place, and/or, why I wasn't contacted by email to advise me that my account wasn't activated .

Bit off a worry

[digital*ghost]

---

@lyndal1838 wrote:

From a buyer's point of view Paymate is not as good as paypal when it comes to disputes.....it costs us money to open a dispute and there is a limit on the number of disputes you can open.

---

There is a limit to the number of claims a buyer can make (2 in 12 months), as well as a lower maximum payout ($3000), but it doesn't cost the buyer anything. They also say the seller has to be an approved TrustMark participant for the buyer to be eligible for protection, but they no longer have any information available (that I can find) about how to qualify as a TrustMark seller. Since payments made via Paymate must be funded by a credit card, many people will still have access to chargeback options for the full amount. 

According to Paymate, you need a FB rating of 0 or a percentage higher than 98% to use it on eBay as a payment option. 

IMHO, adding Paymate in addition to PayPal is unlikely to increase sales, or have any noticable effect, as buyers generally aren't looking for alternatives to PayPal as far as electronic payments go. I know that when Paymate is offered instead of PayPal, buyers often immediately mistrust the seller because for some reason they think if a seller doesn't want to use PayPal, they want the buyer to have less protection, but Paymates own protection program aside, the seller has less protection than the buyer when it comes to CC chargebacks. 

There also seems to be an issue with Paymate automatically rejecting some payments over $100 (supposedly a safety measure, but it would be annoying at best and could happen after you've posted items at worst).