Saturday, April 17, 2010

Paypal Fees – How to Avoid it?

Paypal is a gateway of payment that is used across the world. But since it is a business, obviously it attracts fees in transactions. The company lures customers with different options, but in the end you end up paying more money. So how to avoid paypal fees?

When you establish a paypal account you automatically get a personal account. Just keep it that way and don’t go about upgrading it to a business or premier account. People who simply buy things from ebay or who are working from home and get their monthly deposits from websites, shouldn’t upgrade.

In case you are a new seller at ebay, try not to accept a credit or debit card or else paypal will cut almost 5% of sale price along with 30 cents to receive credit card payments. Ask the buyers to go for instant paypal transfers.

When you want to withdraw money, withdraw to your linked account instead of requesting for a check as a check will attract $1.5 fee.

How about having your own paypal debit card? This way you won’t be paying paypal fee and you will be able to use it just like any other debit card.

Have you seen the refund option when you recieve money from your clients?

Friday, April 9, 2010

Drip Irrigation System – Most Efficient Way to Water your Garden

One of the last things that you need is wasted water in your garden from the drip irrigation system you have installed. There are a few pointers for solving this problem.


1. If you are using sprinkler irrigation, then type of sprinkler head determines the application rate for your lawn. It is the quantity of water that is discharged from a sprinkler at any given point of time.

2. There are 2 types of sprinklers – spray sprinklers and rotor sprinklers. The spray types have a larger application rate and they can be easily used on flat surfaces. The rotor sprinklers have a low application rate, and they are good for uneven terrain. In case you have a mixed landscape, try using both of these sprinkler heads.

Drip irrigation is one of the best ways to water your lawns. In this type of irrigation several tubes with open holes are present. The holes are present at regular intervals. In contrast to the sprinkler systems, the drip irrigation effectively targets the specific garden beds and therefore water wastage is avoided. The holes present on the tubes can be customized according to the way you have placed your plants. This way water is not wasted in the areas between the plants.

Drip irrigation is effectively used in areas where shrubs and flowers are grown. However, ensure that you do not drown your plants. To avoid that situation, you can water them at regular intervals. This way soil will absorb water and get ready for the next flow of water rather than getting flooded.

Also, remember that watering plants during morning time is best as during afternoon the water may evaporate and at night it may encourage fungus growth as the leaves tend to remain wet at night.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Tips To Find Best Credit Card

Credit card is an important plastic that you will find in almost every wallet. Credit card companies will give you alluring options. They entice you with low card fees but you must know how to read in between the lines. Did you know that best rates are offered to consumers who have shown a good credit? For that you need to understand your credit score. The scale for score runs between 300-850. And a score of 700+ will get you more loans. Basically the better your score, the lower the interest will be and you will be able to save tons of money.


Now that you know your score are you ready for a new card? There are low interest rate credit cards, balance transfer cards, 0% APR credit cards, Instant Approval Cards, Travel and Airline Credit Cards, Student Credit cards, and Business Credit Cards.

If you are looking for low interest credit cards, then Capital One VentureOne Credit Card, Citi Platinum Master Card, and BankAmericard Visa Signature Card are good. They all offer 0% APR on purchases.

If you are looking for Student Credit Cards, Citi Forward Card for College Students, and Citi mtvU Platinum Select Visa Card are good and you don’t need a consigner for these. Now if you are not comfortable with normal credit card, there are companies which offer pre-paid credit cards like ACE Pink Visa Prepaid Debit Card, AccountNow Prepaid Master Card, Student Upside Visa Prepaid Card and ACE Visa Prepaid Debit Card. This last one is great as no application fee, no charge for withdrawals at ACE locations and free unlimited purchase transactions are some of its features.

Some of the great business credit cards are AT&T Universal Business Rewards Card, Escape by Discover Card and Delta Airline – Gold Delta Skymiles Credit Card.

Good Travel and Airline Credit Cards are Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card, Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, American express Premier Rewards Gold Card, BankAmericard Power Rewards Visa Signature Card and Virgin Atlantic American Express Card from Bank of America.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Which Countries Support Paypal?

This is a comprehensive list of all the countries that support paypal. Paypal is a payment gateway that offers solutions to people across the globe. It deals in multiple currencies ranging from US Dollar to Thai Baht.

Countries to which paypal offers customized solutions include Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, UK and USA.

In the countries listed below, you can send, receive or withdraw to either a local bank or to a US bank account or a card. This means that you can withdraw money to the bank account that you have in your country or you can also withdraw money to a local bank account. These are Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, French Guiana, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Martinique, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Potugal, Reunion, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey.

In some countries you can even withdraw money to your credit card, debit card or your pre-paid card and these countries are Indonesia, Israel, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Philippines, Slovakia and Turkey.

In some countries you can send, receive, withdraw to a US bank, card or through a Check. These are Chile, Ecuador, Jamaica and Uruguay.

Paypal is one of the most popular payment gateways, but then there others also like Moneybookers, Xoom, etc. Via Moneybookers you can withdraw money to your local account and to an account present in any other country where you have an account. The main criterion is that any account to which you will withdraw money should have your name or it should match to the name that you have registered with these payment gateways. All these payment gateways are extremely strict about money laundering policy in order to protect your money.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Tips to Choose Credit Card Company


Credit card companies are around for quite a while now. Although, they offer merchant accounts for home based, retail and internet business, yet it is very difficult to determine the best credit card processing solution for your merchant banking needs. One should be very cautious before choosing one and must do a comprehensive study between the available options. One can evaluate them on their approval rate, processing speed and application fee. Many credit card companies would approve and process your application without any charge. So, it becomes all the more difficult to choose the right one.

You must keep the following points in mind while selecting one:

• You must choose a company with a low monthly bill cost and a clear idea of the fee structure. Rating is done on the basis of 500 transactions per month.

• The company should not charge an exorbitant amount to setup a merchant account and payment gateway. Good companies normally process and setup your account within 24 hours.

• The company should have a strong customer support system with facilities like email, instant messaging and telephone services. Helpline must respond to your query instantly and also provide the needful information. In general, more than one type of virtual terminal along with an online merchant account and the payment of their gateway are offered by companies.

• Card readers, which can be granted by a variety of sale options and swappers, should be available through the service.

• The credit card company should be such that it can be linked to your e-commerce site, which would have a form for customers to enter their credit card information and make payments online. However, one should try to give all the available payment options to the customer.

• A merchant account which acts as a clearing account for any credit card transaction is as simple as an account in a bank or any other financial institution. Though it is more complicated than opening a checking account, setting up an account is a good deal.

• To authorize the post transactions method and a merchant account, there must be a payment processing system in any financial institution to ensure safe transactions.

• Do not fall for a lower rate. Advertised low rate would be enough to lure you to get on board. But there are hidden costs. One of these things is that the introductory rate they lured you in with may go up even before the special introductory period is over.

• To process huge amount of transactions and payments quickly and easily, the infrastructure of the company needs to be equally strong.

• Please check the features of the payment gateway i.e. virtual terminal, merchant account, clearance time, e-check facility, POS swiper etc.

• Make sure that the shopping cart application you have on your website works well with the banks payment gateway system or else it would result in transaction problems and unnecessary deductions from your account.

• Also check the fraud protection features like CVV2 acceptance, address verification and SSL.

The most commonly accepted credit cards are Discover, Visa, American Express and MasterCard.