Earlier today an attendee for my upcoming conference, DNCruise.com, paid for their pass through PayPal. When I received the payment I noticed no fees were taken out of my account. I asked the payee if they used mass pay and to my surprise they said no. Instead, they were given the option to pay the fee when sending the payment.
I’ve tried getting people to use mass pay with domain sales and for some reason they just don’t understand how to do it. I don’t know about you, but this could be a great way of avoiding PayPal fees without having to explain mass pay.
Here are the steps:
Step 1 – From the main menu select send money. Then select the Personal tab along with Payment Owed.
Step 2 – On the next screen have the payee select the box that says “I will pay the fee”.
The above is just an example to show the box. The fee to transfer using a credit card varies between accounts, in most cases 2.9% + $0.30.
Please note that there will only be a fee if the payee is using a credit card. If they are paying with PayPal funds there are no fees.
Has anyone used this method on PayPal? Is there anything wrong with this or restrictions? I’m also assuming that by using the personal money transfer option there is no way for a customer to dispute a charge?
*Use this technique at your own risk. I personally will not be using it.
I have not used this method… but thanks you to, I am going to give it a try! I honestly didn’t even realize it was an option. It is frustrating that the majority of people have no idea how to initiate a “mass payment” – Here’s a couple of tools that you can offer your buyers to help them send you a mass payment – Paypal Masspay Generator, MassPay File Generator. It’s a bit hard to argue that you can’t figure it out with sites that pretty much do it for you!
- Jennifer.cc
This is actually for “personal” payments between friends. They wave the fees. From my understanding you do it too much and you’ll lose your paypal account. If you accept them I don’t see how they would ever figure out that’s it’s a commercial payment and not a personal payment. Unless you do a blog post about it.
“Unless you do a blog post about it”
I believe you’re only allowed to do this for personal payments, which may carry a lower fee, too. So if you get a bunch of these you might find PayPal scrutinizing your account.
Makes sense…I’m sure they can tell if you do it too often.
With personal accounts you used to be able to get money and pay no fees. Sure, it’s probably still that way too. But this is clearly a regular biz transaction and the person making the payment is being given the option to pay the fee.
I’d say it’s a great idea, though most people clearly won’t do it. Even if I DID want to pay the fee, which often times I would, why would I pay the FULL fee, when I can use MassPay and pay at most $1? MassPay is not hard at all.
I’d suggest you create a simple MassPay text file that people can download. Prefill in the amount etc. if it’s set. Otherwise the people can download it, change the amount and use it. Granted some people still can’t handle this, but I helped a domainer do this to collect his $1 finder fees.
There used to be a site that generated the MassPay file for you. Last I checked it was gone, but maybe someone knows of a site? Making a simple plugin or script that can generate them on the fly for a web site would be a great idea, if it has not already been done. Hint, hint programmers…
Mass pay only works if funds are in an account. I can only think of one end buyer sale where the purchaser had funds in his PayPal account.
Even then, when I mention mass pay it’s like speaking a foreign language.
And why would you pay the full fee? Well, that’s something that is negotiated during a sale. Just like Escrow.com gives the option, PayPal should too.
I never liked the term “mass pay” it sounds like your sending ALL your money
John… I posted a few “masspay” file generator links in the first comment. Check it out.
Yes, it really works. Once when I received funds for a domain I sold. I was really surprised to see that no fees was taken. And yes, the person used “Payment owned” option. I think you should see it in the transactions list like Payment owned and not Payment From or Payment To.