How To Set Up A PayPal Account To Receive Money From Anyone

For years now, PayPal has solidified itself as the payment system of choice for anyone doing business on the Internet.  When people first started doing business over the Internet, you would have thought that some sort of convenient credit-card payment system would have been the system of choice. However, the collective greediness of the major credit card processors created a gap online, where businesses without a lot of available cash flow needed an inexpensive way to offer potential online customers with a fast and convenient way to pay for things online.

The Ebay craze really fueled this. The need for a cheap and convenient payment system was fed by the millions of transactions taking place on Ebay, where most sellers had very little expendable cash to pay for a credit card payment system, and most buyers only had a bank account and credit cards to pay with – and most were very wary of typing in their credit card information over the Internet, with so many cases of credit card numbers getting hacked on the Internet.

Enter PayPal, a system where both buyer and seller simply set up a safe and secure account that can be fed with funds from a bank account, and where the only thing required for monetary transactions on the Internet is an email address. This middle-man of financial transactions was the perfect solution, providing sellers with one of the easiest ways to accept payments on the Internet, and with sellers a “safe-zone” of transactions where they could simply use their email address to make a purchase, and leave the credit card numbers safely tucked away.

With the growth of PayPal, came a greater number of methods sellers can  use to accept payments online. Not too long ago, Tim discussed how businesses can make use of PayPal, but in this article, I’d like to take that a step further and show you all of the different ways that you can actually accept payments from people.

How to Set Up a Paypal Account for Receiving Payments

Sending payments using PayPal is easy, and you can even send out mass payments now. For years, the most common way to receive payments on PayPal (in fact it’s still the most common way) is simply to request a payment from someone. Usually, this won’t be required if you’re using a system like Ebay, where the request for payment is an automated part of the process, and where buyers usually just pay for the products immediately upon winning the auction.

Requesting Payments

However, if you’re working for clients or you have a friend that owes you some money, you can quickly send them a request, which will issue an email from PayPal asking them to submit payment immediately, and providing a convenient link where they can send you the dough with just a few clicks.

The request process gives you a chance to type a quick note that will also be a part of that reminder email. This is one of the fastest and most convenient ways to get payments from someone via PayPal.

Of course, if you run a business or a contracting service, issuing simple requests like this isn’t very professional. If you’re going to be expecting payments from the same clients every month, it’s much more professional to issue monthly invoices, and PayPal can  help you there as well.

Under the “Request Money” tab, just click on the “Create Invoice” link, and you’ll have the option to issue invoice details, including how many days you’ll allow the client to take to send in payment, an itemized list, and even an automated invoice number for your records. There are even several invoice templates available for you to choose from.

These are the two most common ways to receive money from people, and these methods have been available in some form or another since PayPal was founded. However, these days, PayPal provides many more options for you to offer your customers and clients for sending you the money that you’re owed.