E-commerce sites are turning more often to PayPal.

Even just 18 months ago, everyone I talked to about putting up an e-commerce site wanted to avoid (and were willing to spend CASH to avoid using PayPal as their payment gateway. So what has changed?

Well, it seems the banks are cracking down on using merchant accounts designed for "card-in-hand" purchases for on-line transactions.

"What's the difference?", I hear you asking. The difference is risk. Not for me the credit card holder, but for the bank.

The bank's risk of credit card fraud in an on-line transaction is reported to be about twenty times that of a "card-in-hand" transaction. So if you are an on-line retailer, who has opted to "run it through our regular account," better re-visit that decision.