PayPal Gives Users a New Way to Spend Their Money
If you have shopped on eBay or made a donation online, you have almost certainly used PayPal to do so. PayPal is one of the most robust and arguably the most popular e-commerce businesses that facilitates payments and money transfers online. It has become increasingly important in the online commerce industry as more and more individual consumers and businesses make purchases and manage money online.
PayPal provides an alternative to paper checks and money orders, allowing users to receive and send money to others, either individuals or businesses, without going through more traditional banking systems or financial institutions and without even having to leave the comfort and convenience of their homes.
The Benefits of PayPal
As PayPal grew in popularity with the boom in e-commerce, it added more and more features to keep up with the growing interest in online payments but it soon realized that its users were looking for a little more as well. Users quickly found PayPal to be a great way to store their money as well as receive and transfer it.
Instead of sending the money in their PayPal account to their linked bank account, PayPal created an option that allowed users to use the funds in their account to pay for purchases anywhere, just like you would with any major credit card.
The PayPal Top Up Card was introduced to the public as a type of prepaid VISA card that allowed users to transfer the money in their PayPal account to their PayPal Top Up Card and use it anywhere a VISA card was accepted. This meant that users could almost instantly access their funds, instead of waiting several days for the money to be transferred into their bank account. This was the first step in PayPal’s movement toward broadening its services and expanding its presence beyond the e-commerce industry it is so well known for.
The PayPal Access Card
The PayPal Top Up Card has since been canceled and replaced by a slightly more robust card called the PayPal Access Card. Though the PayPal Access Card has primarily the same functions as the PayPal Top Up Card, the biggest difference between the two is that you do not need to load the PayPal Access Card with money from your PayPal account. The PayPal Access Card, like the name suggests, simply accesses the available funds in your linked PayPal account and withdraws from theirs. Another distinct difference is that the Access Card is a MasterCard instead of a VISA card.
What also makes it slightly more robust is the embedded microchip technology on the PayPal Access Card that allows for PayPass payments. You can simply wave your card over PayPass enabled devices and wirelessly and instantly pay for purchases without needing to enter your PIN.
The PayPal Access Card has no annual fee or transaction fees. However, there is an additional cost for withdrawing cash. You may also have to pay additional fees when using the Access Card internationally.