Types of PayPal Accounts

by Ron Kurtus (19 November 2020)

PayPal is a popular online financial service that allows you to securely send or receive payments over the Internet.

There are three types of PayPal accounts, personal, premier, and business account, depending on what sort of transactions you plan to do.

Questions you may have include:

What is a personal PayPal account?
What is premier account?
What is a business PayPal account?

This lesson will answer those questions.

Personal account

A Personal account is for individuals who only want to shop online. It is the easiest to set up. You enter your email address, password, address, phone number and credit card number. You can then start online shopping right away, with your credit card being charged for your purchases.

PayPal is free whenever you use it to buy something. The seller pays a small fee to securely handle your payment. As a buyer, you never have to pay a fee to use PayPal.

Premier account

A Premier account is for individuals who both buy and sell online, such as through eBay. There is no extra charge for a Premier account, although you must pay a fee when selling items and receiving payments through PayPal.

Besides being able to buy things through PayPal with your credit card, you can also send money to friends and family for free when you fund the transfer with your bank account.

You can also use a debit or credit card or make an international transfer for 2.9% of total amount sent plus $0.30 per transaction (the sender decides who pays this fee).

With the Premier account, you are able to accept all payment types for low fees and set up a PayPal Shopping Cart on your website.

Business account

A Business account is for merchants who use a company or group name. Business accounts include all the benefits of Premier accounts, plus you can:

Do business easily and affordably with their low-cost merchant account
Operate under your business name
Generate reports, financial statements and download settlement file
Use eBay Tools
Provide multiple employees with limited access to your account
Get paid from buyers without PayPal accounts

PayPal fees mainly apply to sellers, who pay a 2.9% transaction fee on the total sale amount plus a $0.30 fee per transaction. If you're a business, see PayPal Merchant Fees for discounted rates and other pricing info.

There are other merchant services that charge a monthly fee.

Summary

PayPal allows you to securely send or receive payments over the Internet. There is no charge to open a PayPal account, and PayPal only charges a nominal fee to the recipient of a transaction.

There are three types of PayPal accounts, personal, premier, and business account, depending on what sort of transactions you plan to do.