Signing Up For PayPal

PayPal allows you to accept credit card payments from users in various countries. Your can put a donation button on your site for users to click and then pay (or donate to you) via PayPal.

Step 1

First you will need a PayPal account which you can sign up for at http://www.paypal.com Click the Sign Up button and it will redirect you to https://www.paypal.com. Note the extra s in https. This means that the information will now be transmitted under a secured socket layer so that your information can not be intercepted during transit. In addition, you will see a lock icon in your browser.

on Internet Explorer

on Firefox

Step 2

After clicking on the Sign Up Now button, it will ask you which type of account that you want.

If you want to be able to accept credit cards, you will need the Premier or Business Account. However, if you do sign up for a personal account, you can always upgrade later. If you do select a personal account and someone sends you a credit card payment, PayPal will send you an email asking you to upgrade your account. Whenever PayPal processes a credit card payment, it will take a fee. I chose the Premier Account. Then just following the instruction on entering your information given by PayPal. This includes your name, address, phone number, email address, a password of your choosing, and a security question for password recovery.

Step 3

To verify the correctness of your email address, during the sign up process PayPal send you an email. In the email is a link to activate your account. The email should arrive in the inbox approximately the same time as when you signed up. Follow the instruction to complete the sign up process.

Nowadays, you have to be very careful of what comes into the inbox. There are fraudlent emails that claims to be or poses as legitimate companies, but are really frauds. Make sure that the email that you get in an legitimate PayPal email. See tutorial here.

Step 4

With a new account, you may see the status of Unverified because PayPal has not verified who you are by associating you with a real bank account.

Although, you can leave it this way; it is perfectly fine to associate your PayPal account with a bank account by clicking the Get Verified link. PayPal will ask for your bank account information and will make two small deposits to your bank account.

The next time that you log in, you will be prompted to enter these two amounts.

Since you are the only person that knows what amounts PayPal has deposited to your bank account, PalPay can say that it has verified you and will show this in transactions that you have with customers.

Next

In the next lesson, you will learn how to add a Donate button to your site.