9 Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs PayPal

The foundation of a successful business is being able to cater to your customer. One of the components to gaining loyalty is presenting a fast and secure checkout process. For this and other reasons noted below, we believe PayPal is an all-around winner. With flexible payment options, simple setup, and seamless payment, PayPal delivers what business owners need to build a strong customer base. Here are the stats to prove it.

1. PayPal helps you create a better buying experience with fewer screens, fewer clicks, and up to a 44% better checkout conversion.¹

Most people lose patience every time they have to fill out forms and personal information at checkout on each new website. PayPal Express Checkout gives your customers a fast, easy checkout across devices - and can help you close more sales in the process.

2. PayPal attracts up to 5.3% more customers.2

It's not a stretch to say that PayPal customers look for PayPal when they shop online. In fact, research shows that offering PayPal helps attract up to 5.3% more new buyers. Even better: those buyers spend more, which helps small businesses sell more and grow.

3. PayPal is trusted by more than 188 million active accounts.3

Customers recognize the PayPal logo, and brand recognition is a powerful ally to lend credibility to your company. When it comes to their money, customers want to feel comfortable that their payments will be secure and protected against fraud.

4. PayPal lets you accept 25 currencies securely from 203 markets.

Don't wait for payments to come in from a three-week sea voyage across the Atlantic or pay hefty international wiring fees. PayPal is your ticket to selling into more markets and taking your business international.

5. The flexibility of PayPal can help close more transactions.

Not only can customers pay with credit or debit, but they can also get financing on purchases of $99 or more through PayPal Credit. And it's a popular choice among users: about one-quarter (25%) of PayPal Credit buyers said they wouldn't have made their most recent purchase without PayPal Credit. 4 It can be a great way to help drive more sales and get paid upfront, even though your customers have more time to pay.

6. You can start accepting payments online in about 15 minutes.

PayPal is easy to integrate into your business: it only takes about 15 minutes to add a payment button to your website.

7. You may be able to get a loan - without a credit check.

PayPal Working Capital has provided more than $1 billion in funding to over 90,000 small businesses globally. You may be eligible to apply for a business loan after you start processing payments with PayPal. 5 It could come in handy to prepare for busy seasons or to restock inventory. The lender for PayPal Working Capital in the U.S. is WebBank, a Utah-chartered Industrial Bank, and member of the FDIC.

8. In 2014, 2.5 million businesses of all sizes created and sent out PayPal invoices.

We found that PayPal invoicing is an efficient way of organizing all of your payments and staying on top of money that's owed. Dealing with late payments is a whole lot easier, without the need to send a debt collector. PayPal sends your customers an online invoice that they can pay directly via PayPal, credit card, or debit card.

9. PayPal never takes a day off.

Ecommerce never sleeps, and neither does PayPal. The staff is available to provide support 7 days a week. When you have a problem, you can get it reliably fixed without delay.

PayPal's suite of services is a good choice for any small business, from ecommerce beginners to companies looking to expand internationally. PayPal also provides a transparent fee structure and devices for online and offline sales, gaining the respect of entrepreneurs worldwide.

PayPal can be a trusted business partner, starting at $0 a month, and signup takes as little as 15 minutes! Follow this link to start accelerating your business with PayPal today.

1As reported in Nielsen's Online Panel research for activity occurring from July – November 2015, which compared PayPal transactions to non-PayPal transactions on sites that offer PayPal as a payment option. Nielsen measured 125,000 households' online behavior across 10 SMB merchants. Copyright 2016 Nielsen. 2As reported in Nielsen's Online Buyer Insights, which measured online & mobile purchasing behavior 52 weeks pre-/post-PayPal integration to calculate lift in net new customers who completed a purchase using PayPal. Weighted average results across a group of 15 small- and medium-sized merchants; findings are based on actual transactions, measured among ~39MM US Zip11 Households. Study completed January 2016. 3An active customer account is a registered account that successfully sent or received at least one payment or payment reversal through our Payments Platform, excluding transactions processed through our gateway and Paydiant products, in the past 12 months. 4Source: comScore customer survey completed in January 2016, among 3,010 consumers who have used PayPal Credit. 5PayPal Working Capital is subject to credit approval, as determined by the lender, WebBank, member FDIC. To apply for PayPal Working Capital, your business must have a PayPal business or premier account for at least 3 months and process between $20,000 (or, for certain qualifying business accounts, $15,000) and $10 million within those 3 months or within any time period less than or equal to 12 months. PayPal sales include processing on PayPal Express Checkout, PayPal Payments Standard, PayPal Payments Pro, and PayPal Here.

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The Federal Funds Rate and How It Affects You

The Federal Reserve sets the guardrails for the federal funds rate, and through that helps control the money supply for the nation.

"Federal Reserve Building in Washington D.C. - Illustration" by DonkeyHotey is licensed under CC BY 2.0

When you take out a loan for a car, charge something to your credit card, or get a personal line of credit, there is going to be an interest rate that applies to your loan.

A lot of different factors go into what you will be charged, including your own personal credit score. But even those with flawless credit still see a minimum charge that they can't get around. That all goes back to the Federal Funds Rate.

One thing consumers rarely realize is that all of our banks are lending money to each other every night. Banks are legally required to maintain a certain percentage of their deposits in non-interest-bearing accounts at the Federal Reserve to ensure they have enough money to cover any withdrawals that may unexpectedly come up. However, deposits can fluctuate and it's very common for some banks to exceed the requirement on certain days while some fall short. In cases like this, banks actually lend each other money to ensure they meet the minimum balance. It's a bit hard to imagine these multibillion-dollar financial institutions needing to borrow money to tide them over for a bit, but it happens every single night at the Federal Reserve. It's also a nice deal for those with balances above the reserve balance requirement to earn a bit of money with cash that would normally just be sitting there.

The Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve


The exact interest rate the banks will charge each other is a matter of negotiation between them, but the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) (the arm of the Federal Reserve that sets monetary policy) meets eight times a year to set a target rate. They evaluate a multitude of economic indicators including unemployment, inflation, and consumer confidence to decide the best rate to keep the country in business. The weighted average of all interest rates across these interbank loans is the effective federal funds rate.

This rate has a huge impact on the economy overall as well as your personal finances. The federal funds rate is essentially the cheapest money available to a bank and that feeds into all of the other loans they make. Banks will add a slight upcharge to the rate set by the Fed to determine what is the lowest interest that they will announce for their most creditworthy customers, also known as the prime rate. If you have a variable interest rate loan (very common with credit cards and some student loans), it's likely that the interest rate you pay is a set percentage on top of that prime rate that your lender is paying. That's why in times of low interest rates (it was set at 0% during the Great Recession), a lot of borrowers should go for fixed interest rate loans that won't increase. However, if the federal funds rate was relatively high (it went up to 20% in the early 1980's), a variable interest rate loan may be a better decision as you would be charged less interest should the rate drop without the need to refinance.

The federal funds rate also has a major impact on your investment portfolio. The stock market reacts very strongly to any changes in interest rates from the Federal Reserve, as a lower rate makes it cheaper for companies to borrow and reinvest while a higher rate may restrict capital and slow short-term growth. If you have a significant portion of your investments in equities, a small change in the federal funds rate can have a large impact on your net worth.

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