Internet Business
In this section:
- Buying and selling on the web when you have no credit card. (Just below.)
That's mainly about digital money and services like e-gold, and how to use them.
- Other internet business: Advertising and promoting your website.
Including:
How to Buy Online Without a Credit Card.
On this page:
Some information about what you can do when you want to buy something from a website but...
- You have no credit card,
- You don't live in the USA (so you have no easy way to pay by direct deposit or internet banking).
Or click here for notes about disadvantages of the credit card system, and advantages of digital money for internet trading.
The following might be stating the obvious for many people. However, when I first wanted to buy something online I did not have a credit card. It was not at all clear to me how I could buy anything offered on a web site.
The first option I considered was PayPal.
Most websites with something to sell can accept payments via PayPal.
Anybody can get an account at PayPal, put some money into it, and use it to make payments when ordering from online shops or websites.
If you live in the USA and use internet banking it is easy to transfer money from your bank account to your PayPal account.
But...
What if you cannot use internet banking from within the USA, and you have no credit card?
Seems to me there is only one option here: you will need to ask somebody else to put some money into your PayPal account. This will have to be somebody who has a credit card, a Paypal account or a bank account in the USA.
To me, this is annoying. This is one of the reasons I got an E-Gold account. I can operate it from outside the USA without a credit card.
So, PayPal is essentially an intermediary credit card processor. It can only be funded with a credit card, has few obligations to its clients and a lot of power over their accounts. It has its share of problems too, but still has a great number of satisfied customers.
Of course if your goal is to buy (and/or sell) on the internet while avoiding any reliance on the world of credit card services PayPal is irrelevant to that goal.
On the other hand, there are a lot of websites that accept payment via PayPal and much fewer that accept the digital currencies such as e-gold.
PayPal Accounts for Business
A merchant account at PayPal is very handy if you have something to sell.
If you are selling something you can fund your empty PayPal account with the payments. (People will be paying either by credit card or with their own PayPal accounts.)
With PayPal you can receive card payments for sales you make made either online or offline.
With PayPal you avoid the fuss of enrolling as a merchant with one of the big credit card processing services.
It is easy to get a business or merchant account with PayPal. For small amounts, your customer does not have to be a member of PayPal but can still pay you by credit card.
This is a lot easier than subscribing to one of the big credit card processing services.
I have used this service for years and it has always gone smoothly.
Also, PayPal provide extra features with the business accounts, such as online invoice creation, reports and gift certificates.
Other credit card processing services
If you do need one for your business, it pays to seek out a best fit solution to your own needs, rather than averages based on popularity and publicity.
Choosing credit card processors (Opens in a separate window)
E-Gold
E-Gold is another option for making payments online. As a payment option it is not available on as many websites as PayPal is, but it has a number of advantages. For example: from mamy countries you can fund you e-gold account without using a credit card. You don't need to ask somebody else with a card to put funds into your account.
What is e-gold?
e-gold is an electronic currency, issued by e-gold Ltd. and 100% backed at all times by gold bullion in allocated storage.
Other e-metals are also issued: e-silver is 100% backed by silver, e-platinum is 100% backed by platinum, and e-palladium is 100% backed by palladium. However, the most popular e-metal (by an overwhelming margin) is e-gold.
e-gold is integrated into an account based payment system that empowers people to use gold as money. Specifically, the e-gold payment system enables people to 'spend' specified weights of gold to other e-gold accounts. Only the ownership changes ℿ the gold in the treasury grade vault stays put.
The e-gold system is designed to be absolutely free of any financial risk.
e-gold is 100% backed by gold bullion in storage.
There can be no debt or contingent liabilities associated with e-gold. For this reason, e-gold Ltd. does not possess any national currency of any nation and has no bank accounts. Thus, e-gold Ltd. is not able to offer currency exchange services.
Instead, independent exchange services around the world support exchange between national currencies and e-gold, accepting various remittance methods, including credit cards, bank wires, checks, and money orders.
e-gold itself is accounted by weight but the e-gold payment system allows 'spends' to be expressed in terms of the major national currencies.
This means (for example) that a Canadian can pay a German or a Japanese can pay an Australian the correct weight of gold (e-gold) for a good or service as easily as if the price had been quoted in his own national currency.
Benefits of e-gold.
- Spending e-gold is free, even if your recipient is on the other side of the world.
- Transaction fees (for the person receiving a payment) range from a lot lower to much, much lower than fees for credit cards and bank wire transfers, no matter how large (or small) the payment.
- The e-gold 'Agio' fee (for bullion storage costs) passes on economies of scale normally only enjoyed by very large holders of bullion.
Also there are no barriers to entry with e-gold. Anybody can start an account.
– It costs nothing to open an e-gold account.
– There is no credit check.
– There is no minimum balance requirement.
– There is no concept of a "merchant account", i.e. all e-gold accounts may spend e-gold or receive e-gold payments.
In short, anybody can open an e-gold account in minutes.
E-gold is not the only gold based e-currency. Click here for some others. The page also describes what happens when you want to open a gold account.
Okay: but once you have an e-gold account, how can you add some funds to it?
For this you use one of those 'independent exchange services'.
It works this way because, as mentioned above, the e-gold system is designed to be free of any financial risk, having no debts or liabilities associated with e-gold. For this reason, e-gold Ltd. do not themselves keep national currencies or exchange funds in and out of bank accounts for you.
So, how do we use an independent exchange service?
There are a number of services listed on the e-gold site.
Also, some others are mentioned on this page where we have some background notes about using exchange services.
However there is one service that is particularly useful for people who:
- Are outside the USA
- Do not have a cedit card
My favourite one is eForexGold (aka E-ForexGold – please excuse inconsistency in our use of the name on this site.) E-ForexGold enables users in a lot of different countries to easily use internet banking to operate their e-gold account (and other electronic bullion accounts too).
E-ForexGold is very easy to use and, as far as I can make out, an easy solution for operating e-gold accounts from outside the USA and when you have no credit card.
Read more on our E-ForexGold page. We have a detailed guide there about how to complete a transaction at E-ForexGold. So you will know how it works and what to expect.
Or click the image below to go to the E-ForexGold site.
