Bookerville has been asked many times in recent years to integrate with other payment processors besides PayPal. The context of this question needs to be understood: there are many alternatives to PayPal, and the best of these are true credit card merchant accounts. But for those who either cannot or do not want to go that route, then what they mean by "PayPal alternatives" is really other "lightweight" payment processors like Stripe, Square, Venmo, etc.

True Credit Card Merchant Accounts

Why are credit card merchant accounts better? The top reason is costs: they are usually significantly less expensive than PayPal and PayPal-like alternatives. Their exchange rates for foreign currencies are usually less expensive as well. So depending on your situation, it could be that a merchant account is really your very best solution.

Merchant accounts are more involving to set up though, because they need to tie in to your bank account, they will run a credit check on your business, etc. and there is generally more red tape to get it done. You will also need to choose an Online Payment Gateway that will be used to interface with Bookerville.

All of this takes time, whereas most businesses can set up a PayPal account in five minutes. Some merchant accounts also have either fixed fees per month (in addtion to the rates they charge for each transaction) and/or minimum volumes per month, etc. Generally, merchant accounts are more attractive for larger businesses.

If you want to explore merchant accounts, Bookerville very strongly recommends either The Lynnbrook Group (for businesses with 10 or more properties), or NDMS for smaller businesses.

PayPal Alternatives: Which One?

Bookerville has been integrated with PayPal since the beginning, so it has always been, and will continue to be an option for anyone who wants it. But we have since been asked for alternatives, and so now we are considering rolling up our sleeves and doing just that.

Since developing integrations with payment processors is so expensive, we really only want to choose one alternative, at this time. So we are asking for community feedback to determine the best one to start looking at.

Popular candidates we have heard property managers ask about:

Stripe
Square
Venmo

If you have any interest in this, we ask you to participate so we can gauge not only overall interest, but also which alternatives will please the most businesses.

Feel free to chime in with other thoughts on this topic here, including "voting" for one of the three listed above, or offering other suggestions.

 

 
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