I know that I tend to use paypal for commissions, and I tend to tolerate most of what they do whether it is requiring invoices or being very strict about what sorts of things they allow to be transacted on their platform, but lately they instituted a new policy regarding transactions that I cannot really sit by all that comfortably anymore. Essentially, if a user has a business account with them, they can pause a payment for a whole month, before completing the transaction from a buyer to a business account. They do this regardless of whether the buyer has gotten into any trouble with paypal or has a clean record with the service.

I do not have a business account on paypal, but if I managed to get a commission in that was over 100.00 USD, they would consider me a business account and I would be subject to the payment halt for a whole month. Whether or not the buyer can take the money back while the business is waiting for the transaction to go through is uncertain, but it has been causing a lot of concern from what I have seen on the twitter thread that elaborates on this. If you want to read the discussion, or simply have not heard of this policy change until now, feel free to look here:

https://twitter.com/BarkingMadsuits…..85031264866304

What does this mean for me? It means I have opened up an account on Square. It is very secure, completely professional, and advocates new, growing businesses. They even give this little credit card reader for your phone for free. They also do not withhold payments for a month, have a smaller buyers fee (3.6% at the most from what I have read) and have a lot more features than paypal, plus they have an invoices system for keeping things tidy.

When it comes to payment, you do not need an account to pay someone for their work, you use a credit or debit card. The buyer gives their credit or debit information in order to allow the seller to accept payment; Much like paying for things on amazon or ebay. I understand that using a credit or debit card to pay for things online can make people wary, especially if they do not want their information floating around. So, I will be keeping Paypal as an alternative for accepting payment for commissions.

As of now I have reworked the payment part of my terms of service to include Square as a payment method, along with adding the option for payment plans for any commission over 100.00 USD. The section PAYMENT has been replaced with PAYMENT OPTIONS.

If you want to learn more about Square, here is the site:
https://squareup.com/

and here is a review of the service:

https://www.merchantmaverick.com/re…..square-review/