Many websites benefit from the integration of PayPal Credit Card Services on their website.  By adding PayPal payment buttons to your products or services, you can accept payments online and have instant access to the funds through your PayPal account. 

PayPal boasts one of the highest security and fraud prevention rates in the industry, and has grown to over 100 million users in the past few years.  While, as an online merchant, you are required to have a PayPal account to use their services, your customers are NOT required to have a PayPal account.  A PayPal account today enables you to receive payments made by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, eCheck, or from another PayPal account.

The best part about PayPal, and why we recommend them over other merchant services or merchant accounts, is that PayPay is easy to configure, immediate to setup (no waiting for approval), and there are no setup or fixed monthly services for the most types of use.  You pay as you go, as a percentage of each transaction (1.9~2.9% of each transaction, based on volume, plus a low fee of $.30 transaction fee)

To get started with integrating PayPal into your website, the first step is to open a PayPal BUSINESS account, at http://www.paypal.com/ .  Click "Sign Up" at the top of the PayPal home page.

The difference between Personal, Premier, or Business Accounts are explained on the screen below (more legible of course at PayPal's website, but shown here for reference.)  We recommend the Business Account type because it allows you to enter your business name as the identifier on the account, which is best for customer transactions online.

After you've selected your account type (above) and clicked "continue", you will be guided through the signup process, requiring you to enter your business name, contact information, business type, projected online sales volume, etc.  In our experience over the past five years or more, we have never seen an issue with this information being abused in any way by PayPal, so I would not hesitate giving this information as accurately as possible to them.

You'll be asked for things like a "Customer Service Email" address, and we recommend that you enter a very generic address (make sure you've configured it to work in your control panel first), such as orders@yourdomain.com or sales@yourdomain.com or something clever like stay@yourlodgedomain.com .

You'll also be asked for a customer service phone number, which is important for both your customers and as a security measure when you contact PayPal for customer support.

Once you've completed this signup process, you will be prompted at login or on your PayPal Overview or Home page, to take steps to "VERIFY" your account.  This may involve either providing your online banking login/password to PayPal to verify that your business does exist under this name, or (less intrusive) PayPal will make a couple of random deposits to your account for less than $1.00 and you have to identify those deposits and enter them on a screen in your PayPal account.  This is an important step in verifying your identity as a business.  Your account will be limited in functionality if you don't do it, but once you do it your account will be shown as "Verified" to potential customers making payments to you, adding to their level of comfort and trust in the transaction.  Each time you make a transaction your "Verified" number increases (similar to eBay) and this also adds to your business credibility.

PayPal will also ask you to add a Credit or Debit card from your main bank (business or personal) to your PayPal account profile as a backup funding for purchases you may make with your PayPal account (remember you can both receive payments and make payments wiht your new PayPal account).  Adding a credit card also contributes to your verification process with PayPal.

Finally, after you've been verified, you can request a PayPal Mastercard Debit Card from within your account, and this will give you instant ATM access to funds in your account (daily limit of $400), as well as give you a vehicle for spending (up to $3,000/day).  Do this right away so you have it within a couple weeks.

Now that you've finished the signup process, you can start taking the steps to add PayPal payment buttons to your site, enabling customers to pay with credit cards, eChecks, or their PayPal account for your products or services.  To start, click "MERCHANT SERVICES" from the top menu after you've logged into your PayPal account.

Once you've clicked Merchant Services, a whole bevy of information will come up on the next main page.  The option that you'll be looking for is on the left side menu, or down the page toward the right (it appears in two places).  It's called "WEBSITE PAYMENTS STANDARD" and gives you the ability to accept payments using a variet of tools including the PayPal Shopping Cart, Buy Now Buttons, Subscriptions, Recurring Payments, or Donation buttons.  All of this is provided free.  If you add the capability of a PayPal "VIRTUAL TERMINAL" for a fee of $20/month (the only fee monthly type fee I've found with PayPal), you'll have the ability to accept credit card payments seamlessly by phone as well.  Be sure to read all about the Website Payments Standard, as well as the related "Learn More" or Help files to become well acquainted with their payment offerings.

The most common payment tool we use is the PayPal "SHOPPING CART" tool.  This creates a shopping cart environment with corresponding "Add to Cart", "View Cart" and "Check Out" buttons.  If you are offering a single service or product, you may prefer the "Buy Now" payment option and corresponding "Buy Now" buttons (you can use more than one if needed).  The only difference really, is the absence of the "View Cart" and "Check Out" buttons.  "Buy Now" buttons take you directly to the check out process on PayPal's secure site.

To configure a PayPal Shopping Cart, simply find the link and click it.  You'll be guided through a configuration procedure for each product or service you would like to add a payment button to your website for.  (Shown Below)

If your specific product or service has a changing price, (ie. a different price based on hours worked for a service, or a monthly fee that varies by customer), you should leave the price field blank, which will allow customers to enter in the appropriate price that you have advised them of.

As you go through the configuration, you'll notice that you can choose from a variety of "Add to Cart" or "View Cart" buttons, or you can create your own custom image that matches your website design and you can select that for use in your shopping cart. 

Near the bottom of the configuration page, you'll also find an "Add More Options" button, which allows you to add Sales Tax, Shipping Options, and Product variables/attributes (Sizes, color options, etc.).

When you have configured your Shopping Cart button for your first product or service (you must configure each product or service in this way), simply click "Create Button Now" and you will be directed to a page that provides the HTML code to place on your website, using MyWebNControl's Code View (indicated in the WYSIWYG editor by "<>" at the end of the editing buttons).  Some sample PayPal code from a shopping cart button configuration is show in the screenshot below:

So, now that you've generated the PayPal Shopping Cart code (same for Buy Now, Donation, etc. buttons), you need to copy that code (shown above) and paste it into your website via MyWebNControl.  Go to your login page for MyWebNControl (ie. www.yourdomain.com/webadmin) and login. 

You will need to either locate the page that you want the payment button to appear on, or more likely, create the new page (ie. "Shop Now" "Our Store", or specific shopping category pages like "Sauna Accessories", "T-Shirts", "Monthly Services," etc.).

Once you've created or located the page, click "Edit Web Page" in NControl, and wait for the editor to open.  Next, Type some descriptive information about the product or service you are selling, add a product image if you like (for multiple products we recommend a table format), and then click the last button in the editor "<>" called "Switch between HTML/Text".  This will take you into the raw HTML text view of the web page.  This is where you must paste the shopping cart code that you generated in your PayPal account.

First, locate the exact position where you want the PayPal shopping cart button to appear (the "Add to Cart" button).  This may take some trial and error.  You can create some space by inserting carriage returns between lines of code to create a clean area to paste the code into if you need.  After you paste the code, you can switch back to the WYSIWYG view and see how it looks, though you'll probably want to submit and save the page first to truly see how it looks in the public view.

Here is what the public view will be of the finished Shopping Cart Page (simple design/layout for demonstration purposes of course.)

Whew!  You're done, hopefully you've created your first PayPal Shopping Cart page.  With your feedback, we will continue to expand the instructions provided here, or you can study the voluminous help files at PayPal's website as well.

Good Luck!