Digital Transactions writes:

“PayPal is increasing certain fees associated with its Website Payments Pro service, effective Sept. 1. In an e-mail it sent to merchants Thursday, PayPal said the monthly charge for the service will rise to $30 from $20. Transaction pricing for the Virtual Terminal component of the product will also go up. The new pricing will be 2.4% plus 30 cents to 3.1% plus 30 cents, depending on volume, up from 2.2% plus 30 cents to 2.9% plus 30 cents. Also, PayPal will start levying a 30-cent fee for Website Payments Pro authorizations in cases where transactions aren’t settled within 29 days…”

Source: Volume Climbs for PayPal, While Some Sellers Will See Fees Rise

2Checkout.com is proud to announce the release of our new transaction pages.

The transaction process has been completely rewritten and many improvements have been made. Many of the improvements were made to back-end functionality, so will not be apparent to our suppliers or customers. Several others are visible, however, so I’ll briefly describe these below:

Simplify and Inform

• An improved detailed transaction summary is now included on the right side of each transaction.
• Payment methods are now “conditional”. This means that customers who do not have a payment method available to them will no longer see references to that payment method.
• There is now a “Remove” button by each product or custom cart order. This makes removing products from your cart much easier than the previous method of entering a “0″ in the quantity field.
• Personal and Shipping Information now appears on a single page. This helps simplify the transaction process and allows customers to copy their Personal Information into the Shipping Information fields with a simple checkbox selection.
• To help maintain consistent branding, supplier (vendor) logos, if provided, now appear throughout the entire transaction process.

New Payment Methods

• Customers using Internet Explorer 6 or 7 in the United States will now see a payment option for ATM Direct. ATM Direct brings Real-time, PIN-debit payments to 2Checkout.com.
• Coming soon: FX Source and Paypal

We’ll be providing more details about these changes and future improvements, so check back soon for more information.

UPDATE 7/18: FX Source has been added as a payment option.
UPDATE 10/30: PayPal Express Checkout has been added as a payment option.
UPDATE 11/29: ATM Direct has been removed as a payment option.

In the world of online payments, you may encounter the occasional error code. Some, like common browser errors and 2CO specific errors have their solutions documented (see below), while others receive little explanation. To help remedy this situation, we’ll be providing information about some of the errors you may receive if you’re a customer making purchases or a supplier testing the transaction process.

We’ll start with some of the more common processing errors:
Continue reading…

Google has recently published a 5-year study on hard disk failure. The conclusions are interesting, as they do not correlate directly to what has been believed to be the primary factors in disk failure.

As quoted from the report, “One of our key findings has been the lack of a consistent pattern of higher failure rates for higher temperature drives or for those drives at higher utilization levels. Such correlations have been repeatedly highlighted by previous studies, but we are unable to confirm them by observing our population.”

Read the study. (PDF)

Source: Google Labs Research Publications

Did you know that 2Checkout.com offers a wealth (no pun intended) of information about how to receive payments?

There are several articles in the Payment Inquiries category and it’s subcategories. Some highlights include:

• How and When Will I Be Paid?
• I Have Not Received My Payment, What is the Verification Process?
• Why is My Payment Still Pending?
• Where Is My Money?

As always, if you ever have a question about a specific payment, please open a support ticket or give us a call and we’ll be happy to help.