My business is pretty small, so I don't have a lot of money coming. Still, I'm sick of paying paypal's fees, especially for cc transactions. I looked into a merchant account, but with the amount of business I do the fees were similar or higher than with paypal. I'm wondering if google checkout is running well these days and if it's worth making the switch? Any google checkout users care to share insight? How is it for recurring charges?

We use google checkout for some of our orders. Payments are processed quickly and effectively. The only downside being that customers have to have your their own google checkout account to use the payment processor

I havent personally tried google checkout but i have heard many good things about it. From everything i have read PayPal and GoogleCheckout are becoming the two most widely used online payment types, but PayPal is still ahead. So as for people, PayPal is still the best, but i haven't actually looked into the Fees yet.

Most people use and trust Paypal with their online transactions. Is there any way that you could use both? Sometimes PayPal lets you add their service to other checkout services

The problem with adding both would be that most people know paypal and so you are likely to have lots of people using that still. Therefore you will still have to pay those fees.

The problem with using just Google is that you might not be able to accept some payments-may lose payments when the person doesn't want to open a Google account. So you will ultimately have a choice to make here.

I have only used Google checkout as a customer, and it was ok. Paypal is faster for me though generally as it logs me in, and I don't have to mess around putting my details in.

If your business is that small, could you possibly have two accounts-one personal and one premier, so that you can use the personal for none credit card transactions (and hence save on that fee).

Paypal is well established and trusted among the online community. While the Google name is well established as a search engine, it seems to be in it's early stages as a pay system. While it may be less expensive, you must ask yourself if it's worth loosing a client or two to promote Google payments. If you can offer both, you may be able to help your customers become comfortable with it's newness.

Also, if many of your payments are very small you may want to look at Paypals micro-payments, I believe it's still offered.

Thank you for the suggestions. I don't want to lose any cliets, my income being low already. I too have only used google checkout as a consumer, and it was a bit of a pain; though perhaps it gets easier with use. It's probably better not to switch anyway, since I have a lot of continuous billing, and I'd have to contact all my clientele and discuss the switch over with them.

Couldn't you offer it as a payment option along with Paypal?

One thing I hate in Paypal is their mail support seems not exist. Anytime I need help, I will need to call them.
Another payment method you can consider is Moneybookers. It's very good for us

Moneybook orders is a good payment system from what i have heard, but it is much smaller than paypal. The number of people who actually have and use Moneybookorders is quite a lot lower than Paypal or Google Checkout. Probably the best idea, if you can afford it, is to use Paypal and Google Checkout.

As far as I know, Moneybookers is very good for EU-based customers. I am not sure about the Google Checkout fee, but Moneybookers charge is a good thing for considering.

This is of course personal feeling but I would never go with the smaller services like money bookers or Egold. If something as big as paypal can't get it right then I have absolutely no confidence in smaller places getting it right.

If you can offer the two without costing you more, it might be worth considering.

I'll have to agree with you AbbieRose... and add that once I won an ebay auction that said it took paypal, but then he wanted me to use some other service I'd never heard of. I'm sure it was a safe service, but I ended up talking him into charging me the paypal fees and letting me use paypal. I just wasn't comfortable using a new service. I think consumer trust is an important thing to consider.

Not a fan of either, but honestly would use paypal , its a well known name.

I just tried to use google checkout for the first time as a buyer and after inputing my cc information the page displayed was a common error page.

I would think that they would have , at the very least, a custom error page.