Are there any good alternatives to Paypal for accepting donations over the internet quickly?

December 10, 2011 6:42 PM

I'm part of a fairly small (about 60 members) online community and over the last day, one of our members was made homeless and lost all of her possessions in a fire. We're getting together donations to try and help her get back up on her feet, but a lot of people are concerned about using Paypal due to the recent problems that regretsy have had with trying to fundraise through it. Are there any reliable alternatives that we could use?
posted by emperor.seamus to Work & Money (7 answers total)

Best answer: wepay is the de facto paypal replacement for this kind of situation, but I haven't used it, personally.
posted by fake at 6:43 PM on December 10, 2011 [5 favorites]

Could people purchase gift cards (you'll want to check what would be most helpful) and mail them to the member or a third-party who will package them all together?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:52 PM on December 10, 2011

Response by poster: That's excellent, fake, thank you very much! And thanks so much for the suggestion ThePinkSuperhero! The only problem with that is that they live in Japan, so it'd take a while for them to get the help and right now we wouldn't have a home to send the giftcards too!
posted by emperor.seamus at 6:55 PM on December 10, 2011

Other services worth considering:
Amazon Payment
Google Checkout
Dwolla
posted by gmarceau at 7:03 PM on December 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: A good current roundup of Paypal alternatives, more targeted towards sellers than towards fundraising, but she covers most of the options out there.
posted by judith at 9:42 PM on December 10, 2011

A friend has used chipin.com with success.
posted by manicure12 at 7:34 AM on December 11, 2011

Response by poster: Thank you all very much for the suggestions! Wepay turned out to be just about perfect for us, but I'm looking through the other links with interest!
posted by emperor.seamus at 9:21 AM on December 11, 2011