Alternative to PayPal with Invoicing?

[RTUK]

Up until now, I have always used Paypal for my small business. I invoice via Paypal and it works fine for me, or it did until today. For absolutely no sensible reason, Paypal has put my incoming payments on hold. This means the funds will not be released for 21 days. They say this is due to "unusual activity". It isn't. I have invoiced my regular customers, as I have done so many times before. There is nothing at all unusual about it.

Anyway, I was wondering if there is an alternative to Paypal but that also has invoicing built-in? Or is there nothing else like that out there?

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Stripe!

Get used what PayPal is doing pretty normal. They might even ask for documentation to support your invoices.

Happens to all of us, as long as you can still receive payments but the put payouts on hold to investigate consider that normal.

 

[RTUK]

I don't consider it normal at all. If I were receiving payments from someone unknown or a new customer, It may be different but these payments are for known services that I bill for regularly and from customers, I have a long history with. There are absolutely zero reasons for these payments to be on hold.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Doesn't matter what you think. You went into an agreement with PayPal and accepted their tos which allows them to freeze your accounts for up to 180 days without giving a reason and put other restrictions in place.

Some PayPal bot might have flagged your account for random manual review. They ask some questions you provide information and if they are satisfied they allow you to use their system again or place further restrictions on it.

 

[WaveJumper]

Up until now, I have always used Paypal for my small business. I invoice via Paypal and it works fine for me, or it did until today. For absolutely no sensible reason, Paypal has put my incoming payments on hold. This means the funds will not be released for 21 days. They say this is due to "unusual activity". It isn't. I have invoiced my regular customers, as I have done so many times before. There is nothing at all unusual about it.

Anyway, I was wondering if there is an alternative to Paypal but that also has invoicing built-in? Or is there nothing else like that out there?

You're not on eBay by any chance
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57318294

 

[RTUK]

I don't use the account for eBay. And it most certainly does matter what I think. I am their customer. Remember customers? The people that keep your business going.

Paypal's TOS does indeed allow them to completely mess up your business, hence why I am looking for alternatives. I think It would be better just to get my customers to pay direct into my bank account and cut out the middle man. My customers are fine with that. Some already pay this way. I will move all my funds out of Paypal and move on.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

I am their customer.

The reality is they don't care about you as much as a bag of rice in china tipping over. Which leads as back to the facts which is irrelevant from what you think. You approached them and accepted their TOS. They do now exactly what is outlined in your contract with them.

 

[presentationgenius]

I switched to Stripe. The set-up interface is a bit of a square wheel (so about the same as PayPal then ) but it works and so far hasn't messed me about at all in the way PayPal has done in the past.

 

[RTUK]

Oh, I agree, they couldn't care less. And me taking my business elsewhere is not going to affect them one jot. But it affects me and that is all I am interested in. If there are no better alternatives to Paypal, that's fine. I asked on here because I assumed it was the sort of place where people might know.

I will just use the bank and leave it at that.

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

Up until now, I have always used Paypal for my small business. I invoice via Paypal and it works fine for me, or it did until today. For absolutely no sensible reason, Paypal has put my incoming payments on hold. This means the funds will not be released for 21 days. They say this is due to "unusual activity". It isn't. I have invoiced my regular customers, as I have done so many times before. There is nothing at all unusual about it.

Anyway, I was wondering if there is an alternative to Paypal but that also has invoicing built-in? Or is there nothing else like that out there?

Depending on what your business is could you invoice your clients/customers and simply ask for payment by bank transfer? Most decent accounting software will enable you to issue invoices quickly and easily. I like and use Accounts Portal and FreeAgent both of which are great for invoicing.

 

[RTUK]

That sounds like it is probably the way to go. Several of my customers already pay via bank transfer and they prefer that method rather than using Paypal. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Spur Support Services]

Hi RTUK
You don't really say, what you sell, how you sell or who you are selling to, so it is very difficult to give an appropriate answer.

If you raise your invoices within your accounting software, then have a look through the Payment Apps that can be linked to that process for the Accounting Software that you use.

 

[RTUK]

I sell website hosting and design. No tangible goods and mostly to customers I had been dealing with for years, some I have had as customers for 20 years! These are the same customers whose payments Paypal has put on hold. There is no logical reason for it whatsoever.

 

[Moorgate Cash Management]

Ever thought about Direct Debit? I've been supporting small business in to the most appropriate solutions to enable them to collect Direct Debits for years. Ideal for pretty much any business where receipts are regularly collected from customers....

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I don't use the account for eBay. And it most certainly does matter what I think. I am their customer. Remember customers? The people that keep your business going.

Paypal's TOS does indeed allow them to completely mess up your business, hence why I am looking for alternatives. I think It would be better just to get my customers to pay direct into my bank account and cut out the middle man. My customers are fine with that. Some already pay this way. I will move all my funds out of Paypal and move on.

You can rant about it matters what you think as you are the customer, but... it doesn't !

Paypal are a lousy company, they don't care what customers think they do whatever they feel like doing.

The comment 'it doesn't matter what you think', isn't meant to be an insult against you it's a statement of fact, paypal don't care what you think!

Go Cardless and/or stripe is the way forward. First payment Stripe, ongoing on DD.

 

[ctrlbrk]

I've come across this

Why Paypal limit’s accounts:
Paypal is financially liable for funds that you accept, so if they feel your account may cause problems for them or other customers, they will freeze your account. Paypal has an automated system as well as a human managed system for fraud control. If they hold funds, it is because something with your account set off an alarm and either automatically or after human review, they decided that it is in Paypal’s or Paypal’s customer’s best interest to put a hold on your account. It nothing personal, and most of the time it was probably a computer that froze the account based on some fraud algorithm.

Some reasons an account may be frozen:

• Increase in transaction volume (IE: More Transactions).
• Increase in single transaction amount (IE: Larger Transaction).
• Increase in disputes from customers.
• Increase in refunds to your customers (with our without any disputes).
• If a certain percentage of your transactions are disputed over a period of time.
• If fraud was reported against your account.
• Logging-in from multiple IP addresses (* Speculation).
• Withdrawing over a certain threshold amount (** Speculation).

Does anyone that has had problems with PayPal here fit into any of these reasons?

 

[HostXNow]

Another vote for Stipe! I moved the main gateway from PayPal to Stripe. Not as much go through PayPal anymore. I didn't particularly appreciate how PayPal subscriptions worked i.e. duplicate payments to some clients etc. That's a non-issue with Stripe.