Who uses PayPal for coaches fees?

For a small, occasional vendor like a coach, paypal is an excellent option. You just need to set up a merchant account and the funds will be deposited into any account you choose. There's really no need for a new account...depositing into a regular checking account would be fine. The fees that paypal charges are very similar to anyone who accepts credit cards.

PayPal rocks

PayPal is perfect for the coach.

PayPal can setup up personal or business account. Business may be better so you can also accept credit cards. They will verify your bank account first.

This has nothing to do with how you setup their actual bank account. No need to have any different bank account.

For what it is worth we use it and have used it for a number of years--it is great--what I like about it is that I need not get involved in your credit card info--Pay Pal takes care of all that both the seller and the buyer are protected

So for you guys that have used it help me...if we have a 501# etc (which we do) I manage the checking business account for my sons team, do I go to the bank we are using to arrnage to accept mastercard or visa for payment of dues thru Paypal etc or do I just go thru Paypal?

Open a separate bank account with the 501 number as the tax id on the account. You don't want to comingle funds. It keeps things clean and protects you.

Eric,

Assuming you have a bank account open already, you do all of the PayPal setup online through PayPal.com.

I use PayPal as a payment option for my other small business (Web development), and here is how it worked years ago - probably still the same.

First of course you will set up your PayPal account by entering your info on paypal.com. Next, in order to receive the funds from payments made to you, you will also enter your bank account information. PayPal will then make two small electronic deposits into your bank account (in the range of 1 cent to 5 cents over a couple of days time). You will watch for those deposits into your bank account, and then enter the deposit info on paypal.com to verify that your bank account info is correct.

If you only accept payments by electronic check from customers, PayPal will not deduct a fee from the payments to you (its free). However, most customers expect you to accept credit cards, and I think the added convenience for them helps your business. PayPal will deduct around 2 to 3 percent from each payment for the credit card fee.

Also, the first time a PayPal payee receives an unusually large payment, PayPal may hold the money for a while. My young adult son had a PayPal account that he had used to buy and sell a few small things on eBay - under $100. Later he sold a very nice guitar on eBay for around $1,500, and accepted payment thru PayPal. PayPal held those funds for "verification" - he could not withdraw the money for approximately 30 days. This protects PayPal.com from being stuck refunding the payment for a stolen credit card, etc.

Julie

Thanks for the input! Assuming just a single coach managing 4 travel teams:

- "Premier" or "Business" account? Is there a difference in fees or other capabilities? I'm not sure I get the distinction between accepting "credit cards" and if that is a function of a business account (i.e. does a debit card work with Premier or do they need your bank acct to do an EFT?).

- Is there a way to set up an email list and recurring monthly invoices per team via PayPal? That seems like utopia for a coach! Is it easier to just tell people to make a payment via your email address or via web page link?

The goal here is get the coach out of chasing 100 people around every month for fees...

As a parent, I loved to be able to pay for coaches, tournaments via Paypal. It was great.