How to Fully Utilize Your Paypal Merchant Account
	By Kevin Fleming | February 27, 2008

If you have an online store, you probably accept Paypal and have a Paypal Merchant Account set up. Although you may use your Merchant Account daily there are a lot of great features that can be easily overlooked. Below I have compiled a list of 5 great services that can be used with your Paypal Merchant Account. You can find all of these services under the “Merchant Services” tab on the Paypal website.

1. Gift Certificates

I have found that a lot of online stores completely overlook gift certificates. Gift certificates can be a huge seller during the holidays, and Paypal offers an easy way for any online merchant to implement them into their existing website almost instantly. Through your Paypal merchant account you can even generate the gift certificate buttons as seen below.

Customers can then claim their gift certificates on your site when they go to checkout with Paypal.

2. Service Subscriptions

One of the best services Payal offers is a reoccurring billing feature called Service Subscriptions. This allows you to sell a service that may cost x amount of dollars each month, such as a membership to a community or club. This is probably the easiest way to implement reoccurring billing on your website and works great if you have a paid section of your forum or community. In fact Vbulliton has Paypal Subscriptions built in, so if you have a Paypal Merchant Account you can instantly set up paid areas of your community.

3. Virtual Terminal

The Paypal Virtual Terminal (available in the U.S. only) allows you to accept credit card orders over the phone, by fax, or by email. To process these orders you then enter the credit card number into the virtual terminal (on the paypal website) and Paypal then processes the transaction. The whole process is fairly straight forward and has a low per-transaction fee.

4. Multi User Access

If you have employees that deal with your billing and shipping Multi User Access allows you to grant them access to your Paypal account, but limit their ability to use certain features. These features include things like sending money, requesting money, giving refunds, and withdrawing funds just to name a few. This way your employees can handle the billing, and your company will remain protected.

5. API for Developers

If you are looking to integrate Paypal into your existing E-commerce system Paypal offers various API’s that allow developers to integrate Paypal’s functionality rather painlessly. Paypal seems to be embracing mobile commerce and even offers an API specifically for mobile websites called Mobile Checkout API. You can also get answers to any of your development questions at the Paypal Developer Center.

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