Don’t want to use PayPal as a payment method? Let’s find out in this guide all the alternatives available.
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Alternatives to PayPal
Although PayPal remains for many the best service to pay online or to exchange sums of money with friends or relatives, there is no shortage of quality and financially safe alternatives! In the following chapters, therefore, we will talk about the characteristics that a site like PayPal must have and how to choose a valid alternative, perhaps choosing from those proposed below.
Characteristics of a financial brokerage site
Before seeing what are the alternatives to PayPal, let’s try to understand what are the characteristics that a good financial brokerage site must have in order to truly define itself as a PayPal replacement:
- Safety: no need for explanations! The site must be secure, accept only encrypted connections on all pages (TLS), and store the credentials of credit cards or associated bank accounts in a hacker-proof server.
- Compatibility: it is useless to use an alternative service to PayPal if it is not supported by any site or if it is not used by any relative or friend. But if we really want to use an alternative we can also convince our friends to use another service.
- Customer service: one of the strong points (which can make a difference) in a financial brokerage site is the quality of customer service, which must always be available on any day of the week, even better if by telephone.
- Refunds: let’s try to find out what are the conditions for exercising the reimbursement of the sums spent on an e-commerce site or when purchasing a service.
If we have problems in a transaction, the brokerage site must act as a guarantor of the sums spent and if the reason is on our side, reimburse the sum spent in full.
These are certainly the basic requirements to be able to find a valid alternative to PayPal without regrets. All the sites that we will recommend in this guide have these requirements, so we can use them as real replacements for PayPal.
Alternatives to PayPal
After seeing some features that a financial brokerage site must have, here are the best alternatives to PayPal that we were able to try.
The first service we can try as an alternative to PayPal is Satispay, available as an app for Android and iPhone / iPad, and also manageable from the website. With this service, we can pay on the fly in any shop or we can send and receive money with our friends or relatives (obviously if they also use Satispay). The operation of the service is really very simple: we set a fixed budget for each week and, once associated with the current account, only the difference not spent so far will be withdrawn or, in the case of an amount greater than the budget, it will be a bill. For example, if we have a budget of € 200 and spend € 100, we will be charged € 100 at the weekend; if, on the other hand, we have a budget of € 200 and reach € 350, at the weekend € 150 will be credited to our account.
To learn more, we invite you to read our guide Satispay: how to pay in stores and online without a credit card.
Another valid payment service is Apple Pay, integrated into all Apple devices (including Apple Watch), which allows you to pay quickly and without problems in many physical stores that display the Apple Pay logo (with POS enabled) and in online stores.
Using it is very simple: we add a credit card or a prepaid card to the system and, when it’s time to pay, we use Contactless technology and the efficient authentication system developed by Apple via fingerprint or Face ID (for those who own iPhone X ) to pay any amount of money.
In addition to using it for purchases in physical stores, we can use it to pay on many online websites such as Deliveroo, Booking.com, EasyJet, E-Price, and many others.
A service very similar to the one seen earlier is Google Pay, accessible from both the website and the Android app.
Using Google Pay we can associate each of our credit or prepaid cards and use it for Contactless payments in stores, enabling payment by PIN or by biometric authorization (fingerprint or face reading, based on our smartphone).
Another good alternative to PayPal is Masterpass, available from the official website.
This service offered by MasterCard but accessible with any credit card (including Visa) or prepaid cards allow you to pay online without ever having to enter your credit card details, but using only the credentials of this site and the advanced system of protection offered by a large company such as MasterCard that allows you to obtain the code with which to authorize the transaction via app or SMS.
Currently, Masterpass is supported by the following services or sites: MediaWorld, Italo, Trenitalia, Unicoop, Monclick, Esselunga, and many other online sales services.
Among the new payment services that you can use we also mention Amazon Pay, accessible from the website.
Amazon provides its competing online wallet system to PayPal that allows you to pay both on its own site and on other affiliated sites. For those who are already Amazon customers, obtaining this service is really very simple: just log in with the e-mail address and password of your Amazon account to immediately get Amazon Pay and start paying online.
The purchase protection system is the same as Amazon’s, so in case of problems, just contact the same assistance to get support.
Other alternative payment services to PayPal
In addition to the services seen above, we can try one of those in the following list, so as to always have a good alternative to PayPal just a click away.
- Skrill: Once called Moneybookers, Skrill is a service very similar to PayPal and shares many aspects, including the ease with which it is possible to manage a transaction without ever having to communicate credit card or prepaid card details and the ease with which you can transfer money between different Skrill users. Widely used on foreign e-commerce sites (especially in the USA) it can be a valid substitute for PayPal for those who buy a lot abroad. Also, note that Skrill can be used for free and anonymously for payments of small amounts.
- NETELLER: In the early days of financial intermediation (so before PayPal became what it is today) there was NETELLER, a complete brokerage service with very efficient assistance. This site supports any credit card and allows you to send and receive money both from other NETELLER users and to pay on affiliated sites (in particular in the USA)
- MyBank: If instead of a credit or prepaid card, we want to use the current account to pay online and authorize transactions, we can rely on MyBank. This service offers a common platform between seller and buyer where money can be safely transferred from one account to another, even between different banks; to make a purchase, simply enter the credentials to access the bank and the security code via SMS to confirm the transaction.
- PostePay: the App PostePay allows you to send and receive money in P2P commission-free, becoming a great alternative to Paypal in many cases, as explained in another article.
Conclusions
If we are not happy with PayPal or we are looking for similar but equally effective and safe services, alternatives are not lacking and, even if we are happy with PayPal, it does not mean that we cannot join another service such as Satispay or the electronic payment systems Google Pay. and Apple Pay, well-integrated into modern smartphones and useful in many scenarios.
Don’t have a PayPal account yet? We can fix it immediately by reading our guide Create a Paypal account to pay and receive payments online.
If, on the other hand, we are looking for a good prepaid card or a current account at a good price, we invite you to read our guides Best prepaid cards to buy online without risk is Best current accounts to activate online.