There’s a tough battle underway in the world of card payments handsets. PayPal is promoting the PayPal Here service and we like it a lot.
But although the Paypal Here handset is attractive and beautifully designed, it doesn’t seem that they’re winning the day. That said, it seems that the upcoming new PayPal Here handset will also include contactless. That will likely be a real draw to those who use it at craft fairs, events, car boots and the like.
But I’ve never seen the PayPal Here handset in action when I’ve been out and about.
In the past few weeks though, I’ve seen the iZettle handset in use in the wild on several occasions. Firstly, I saw it at the Udderbelly festival on the South Bank in London when buying a few drinks last week. It’s a pop-up venue for shows and socialising and the man behind the bar could only praise the iZettle device.
iZettle handsets were also in action at the Love Supreme festival and a Brighton Craft fair I visited last weekend.
I wonder if the issue is cost. A PayPal Here handset is £49 but the iZettle unit is absolutely free.
Are you using a payments card reader when you’re selling and out and about? If so, what’s your preference?
6 Responses
A stupendous mistake by paypal charging for their handset ,they could have had the market cornered, yet i zettle and others have an obvious opening
I guess iZettle’s 2.75% fee has probably helped too:
https://www.izettle.com/GB/pricing
You have to generate over £6k a month before PayPal can beat that (at which point iZettle charge 1.77%!):
https://www.izettle.com/GB/pricing
I’m sold. Thanks for the heads up, Tamebay.
S.
Having got both (Paypal Here for our eBay business and iZettle for our auction business), you need to be aware that the free iZettle reader is not a patch on the Paypal Here reader, so you have to spend the £49.50 to get the iZettle Pro reader. We have both and the free reader is cumbersome to use and has very limited compatibility with phones/tablets due to the hard wired (headphone socket) connectivity.
Pros of iZettle? Cheaper to use as the amounts go up, payment straight into bank account, not Paypal account.
Cons of iZettle? Standard merchant terms of 2-3 working days to get your money. Customer not present transactions not available.
Pros of Paypal Here? Recognised brand, people not scared of it. Customer not present transactions can be processed.
Cons of Paypal Here? More expensive to use, more cumbersome to enter PIN, Paypal seem to have a very free hand on “security checks” if they feel like it.
Yes its price.
we had a choice, I advised waiting for the price to drop on the Paypal unit, it didnt, we got i-zettle.
where paypal wins is with their merchant funding
repayment via sales,