It is no surprise to many experts to find Paypal Losing to Google Checkout for the Christmas 2006 online sales. For some time people have wanted an alternative to Paypal. In the recent weeks I have worked with companies that have just switched accepting money for their web businesses from Paypal to Google Checkout. Many of them are product based ecommerce businesses, but two of them are service businesses.
Alexa.com shows that Paypal is down 60% for the traffic it received a year a go at this time. Much of the decline seems to have happened Mid December and January. And although Google trails in its share of the market with many of its products other than search, I really like how they shake up many markets almost instantly with the introduction to easier and simpler products.
I use Google Checkout for one of my service businesses, and it seems to work out great. The current version of Google Checkout does make it hard to set up recurring subscription based charges. We discovered a way to get around that, and our team does not seem to have any other big concerns with Google Checkout (for now).
I forgot to mention the perks that go along with Google Checkout this year are great. I still use paypal for some transactions, but that is because they are not yet using Google Checkout. Google makes things so much easier.
