Using PayPal for Payment

This page explains what PayPal is, the benefits of using PayPal, and how to use it.

What is PayPal?

PayPal is a company that helps merchants (like us) accept payments from customers (like you) over the Internet.  Using PayPal, you can send us payments from your credit card or checking account.  To use an analogy, PayPal is like the US Postal Service when you mail a check to someone: it is the means by which money is transferred from you to someone else.  (Except your payment can't get lost in the mail!)

Benefits of PayPal

One of the biggest concerns of anyone shopping on the Internet (and rightly so) is security.  We've all heard stories of unsuspecting people who have had their credit card numbers stolen.  It can take months, if not years, for a victim to clear their financial record after such an incident.

One of the major benefits of using PayPal is the security of knowing that your credit card information is safe.  This is accomplished in the following ways:

• PayPal has over 17 million customers worldwide, meaning that the chances of you being "singled out" by a credit theif is extremely remote.  (Safety in numbers.)
• PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information in transit from your computer to theirs using the Secure Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length of 128-bits (the highest level commercially available).
• Once your information reaches PayPal, it resides on a server that is heavily guarded both physically and electronically.  PayPal servers sit behind an electronic firewall and are not directly connected to the Internet, so your private information is available only to authorized computers.
• PayPal does not share your credit card or bank account information with us (or any other business that uses PayPal for online payments).  The more you rely on PayPal for your online payments, the fewer companies will have a copy of your credit card or bank account information, and the less chance there is of theft.
• PayPal is widely accepted on the Internet, as more than 2 million businesses use PayPal to process online payments.

How to Use PayPal

To use PayPal, the first thing you need to do is establish an account.

• Click here to establish your PayPal account

Need More Information?

If you have further questions about PayPal we recommend that you see the PayPal web site.