PayPal and its account optional setting

I had played with PayPal’s integration in a few online stores but never got to this stupid situation. For those that are not aware, the ‘Account Optional Setting’ allows the customers of an online store to pay directly, supplying the credit/debit/prepaid card information. This is really really awesome feature, because creating PayPal account is actually not enough to make a payment. Customers must verify their cards through PayPal which is done by moving through some steps including:

• PayPal charges your account for 1.50 US Dollars or Euro … actually I am not very sure
• Then you go to your bank account provider and ask for the description in the transaction. Should be 4 or 5 digit number which you need in the next step
• Go to your PayPal account and supply that to verify

That is it! Then you can make payments through your PayPal Account. Isn’t this too much to buy a pair of shoes ?

Here comes the Account Optional Setting which allows all of this to be skipped. The bad news are that merchant accounts from specific countries have this option available. On the other hand this is not mentioned anywhere in the docs!!! You get to know that when you start searching for the option. I found a list of countries that have this feature enabled in some forums … don’t know if it is updated:

• Australia
  
• Belgium
  
• Canada
  
• France
  
• Hong Kong
  
• Netherlands
  
• United Kingdom
  
• United States

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