How to Paying by Credit Card
- Credit is not the tool you think it is. Remember that credit card companies are in the business of making money. Adopting a "Cash is King" policy will go a long way in stopping your dependency on credit.
- Stop using your cards. Literally freeze them in a block of ice if you need to. (Hanging a sealed bag of water, with the cards inside, is a fun and mess-free way of doing this.) Or, you can take your cards and cut them in to pieces with scissors, this way you are sure that you won't use them again.
- Look at your balance. Multiply it by .5. This is your next payment. So if you have a 1000 dollar balance, your first payment is 500.
- Repeat step one. Each month look at your balance and pay off 50% of it. By the 6th or 7 month you will owe less than $20, and then you pay that off and you are done.
- If you do this and then calculate the true interest that you end up paying, you will be pleasantly surprised. If our example credit card account had a 15% advertised rate, your would have only paid 2.5% in interest.
- Track your spending, and find extra money to pay of your debt.Get an extra job,doing extra chores...
- Stop spending money on the little things.For example: Don't buy your books/DVD's or CD's just lend them from your local library. Don't buy sandwiches outdoor, just make them at your home.
- Stop spending and save more.Save every month a little bit of money, it may seem not that much, but its a beginning.
- Look if you can put all of your debts together. This way you don't have to pay all that extra rent to the bank,it will release your debts a little bit.
What is PayPal?
PayPal provides a way to send money to anyone in the world who has an email address.
But, first you have to register your details (including Credit Card details) with PayPal. As part of this process you decide on a password so that you are the only one who can access your PayPal account.
All this information which is sent to PayPal is sent securely (ie all the data is encrypted) so that even if intercepted by anyone while passing across the Internet, the information cannot be extracted. Only PayPal can decipher the data.
(PayPal uses "SSL security" which is the industry standard way to send sensitive information in a highly encrypted form across the Internet. Virtually all on-line stores and banks use this same system.)
The advantage for the seller (me in this case) is that I don’t have to set up a "Credit Card Payment Gateway" with a bank to be able to accept Credit Card payments. Such a set-up with a bank is not economical for such a moderate volume of transactions.
The advantages for the buyer (you) are:
- ease of payment via Credit Card
- ability to pay in your local currency without paying any bank fees (bank charges for International bank drafts, or currency conversion fees)
- you pay no fees to PayPal
- no postage costs or postal delivery delays when sending your order and payment to me
- you have a record of your payment
Because of the encryption used, the main security risks are not to the information while in transit across the Internet, but at either end of the transaction.
At the PayPal end it is possible that a criminal insider could obtain access to your information. Their internal security system is designed to greatly minimise this risk. The risk is much less than if you were to physically use your Credit Card in an actual store to buy goods. An employee could record your Credit Card details.
At your end, the 2 main risks are:
- Firstly: that you reveal your password to someone (eg by writing it down and keeping it in a place that is insecure such as on your work desk, or in your wallet, or on a note attached to your computer).
- Secondly, that you reveal your password to a fake PayPal site. This scam is known as phishing. The way it works is that you receive an email pretending to be from PayPal asking you to log-in to your PayPal account to update your details, or to check possible suspicious activity on your account, or because of a software upgrade, or some similar statement. The email provides a link for you to go directly to a website pretending to be the PayPal site. This site is set up to be identical in appearance to the 'real' PayPal site. If you enter your password on this fake site then the criminals behind it can access your account (as you have just given them your password!) and send money to accounts they control. For more details on phishing see here. This type of scam is now so common that many people have now received them. Forward any PayPal one to spoof@paypal.com
Remember: NEVER EVER click on a link in an email to go to PayPal or to a bank website - it is very easy to place a fake 'from' address in an email, and it is easy to redirect you to a fake site, even if the name of the link in the email looks correct
I have never used PayPal before, how do I register with PayPal?
Go to the PayPal home page at: http://www.paypal.com and click on the "Sign Up Now" link.
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