What is it?

PayPal Shopping Cart is a free software program offered to PayPal customers. PayPal is a subsidiary of eBay, founded in Palo Alto, California in 1998. PayPal was created as the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com. Confinity was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999 as an Internet financial services company. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay. PayPal had previously been the payment method of choice by more than fifty percent of eBay users, and the service competed with eBay’s own payment subsidiary, Billpoint. Upon acquiring PayPal, eBay phased out its Billpoint service in favor of retaining the PayPal brand. The PayPal shopping cart is software that can be added to the Web site of an online store, allowing items to be added to a basket to start a checkout process.

Who is it for?

The PayPal shopping cart is for current customers of PayPal. Anyone with an online store currently accepting payments through PayPal can enable use of the shopping cart on the Web site. PayPal offers accounts for both casual online sellers and business owners of any size. The product is user-friendly, but flexible. Users can create a customized shopping experience for customers while experiencing hassle-free selling.

Features

With PayPal’s free Shopping Cart, the user’s customers can purchase multiple items with a single payment, browse the user’s entire selection, and view a consolidated list of all items before purchasing. The software offers a low-cost way for users to accept credit card and bank account payments. It can be fully integrated with any Web site in a few easy steps. It is easy to implement with no CGI scripting necessary. There are
no up-front costs, as current PayPal customers have the same low fee schedule used when receiving other PayPal payments. PayPal maintains detailed transaction records on its Web site. The software offers customizable buttons and secure payments. Optional features include overriding profile-based shipping and sales tax for items in the cart, converting Buy Now buttons for use with the cart, pre-populating customer’s sign-up, and modifying item cost and description dynamically.

The PayPal shopping cart is easy to set-up and use. PayPal customers simply log in to their Premier or Business PayPal account, click on the Merchant Services tab, and click on the PayPal Shopping Cart link. They then specify the name, price, and other details of the item to sell, add more optional information such as shipping, sales tax, and option fields for size and color, and click “Create Button Now” and the Button Factory will generate customized HTML code. Customers then paste the HTML code on their Web sites to create the “Add to Cart” and “View Cart” buttons. When a buyer clicks the “Add to Cart” button, a new window will appear listing the contents of the buyer’s PayPal Shopping Cart, including the item just added. To make the purchase, the buyer clicks “Checkout” from this window. Experienced HTML users also have the option of bypassing the Button Factory and creating their own PayPal Shopping Cart payment buttons by altering the HTML code directly.

Compatibility

The PayPal shopping cart allows integration and automation of PayPal payments on the user’s Web site. Supported server platforms include Linux, WinNT, and OsX Server. Any current customer accepting payments through PayPal can access and use the PayPal shopping cart feature for no additional cost, and the feature is compatible with every browser and server with which PayPal itself is compatible.

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