Itsme

Dell woos PayPal customers
By Michael Singer
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: November 14, 2005, 9:01 AM PST

Dell is now accepting PayPal payments from U.S. consumer and small business customers, the company said on Monday. The company, whose direct-delivery model helped it grow faster than the overall PC market for years, said it is adding the payment option in advance of "Black Friday," the traditional start of the holiday shopping season.

PayPal has more than 86.6 million accounts, with users transacting more than $6.7 billion in the third quarter this year, according to Dell's estimates. "Given the popularity of PayPal, we expect the new payment option to be a hit with current customers and serve as a tool to attract new shoppers to Dell.com," said Tom West, Dell's director of home and small business marketing. Even though its quarterly profit fell during the back-to-school buying season, Dell expects the holiday shopping season to increase fourth quarter revenue to between $14.6 and $15 billion.

Cubsfan

I don't get it. Do a lot of people have excess funds in paypal that they would want to use to buy a computer? I always just draw those funds out ASAP (mainly because I don't trust paypal). Is the point that this allows people to buy a computer without a credit card?

Also, doesn't this cut into Dell's profit? I would think that not only are there the Credit Card fees (like 1.5%), but paypay probably also charges a fee on top of that.

Thesifer

Aren't business credit card fees more like 5-8% though? So really they would be making more money taking the paypal fee cut. Of which they probably worked out a nice deal for the business.

__________________