Going on the advice of some of the greatest business minds of our times, your best bet at making a success out of your business venture might very well be going online. Based on the skills you have in relation to all that it takes to erect an online business, it can cost anywhere from $18 to get up and running, plus around $10 per month thereafter for the hosting of your online business. Of course this would imply that you possess coding skills and can develop the web application platform yourself.

Some web-based businesses are as easy to set up as buying a WordPress template and then just focussing on the marketing of your online offering, but in any case the consideration of what your options are by way of payment processing comes into focus.

PayPal

Still the world’s best loved online payment processor, or perhaps just the most widely used, PayPal offers access to established markets and it offers access to an established user base comprised out of individuals who have trusted the platform for a very long time. Apart from the implementation of shopping cart payment functionality, PayPal is best loved for its simplicity in deployment. You can generate a “buy now” or “pay now” button etc in less than five minutes to be integrated into your website for you to accept payments for the products and services you sell. That generated button even allows holders of credit cards and debit cards to pay for your offering if they don’t have PayPal accounts themselves.

Payza

Formerly AlertPay, Payza is meant to be the main competitor to PayPal as it has long since offered the same functionality as PayPal, except it was available to users from countries PayPal does not service fully. Payza doesn’t seem to be making too much headway by way of popularity though.

Skrill

Formerly MoneyBookers, Skrill does very well to cover all those markets PayPal doesn’t, although Skrill doesn’t really offer the same capabilities of being able to accept payments by easily generating something like a payment button. You’d have to officially apply as an online business in order to enjoy such functionality, but just like PayPal and Payza, buyers can send you payments by just using your email address as your “account ID”.

Payoneer

While Payoneer is indeed growing in the number of companies it allows users to receive payments from, from the point of view of operating an online business it’s more for those who want to be able to send payments to a big user base they have. For example, if you operate something like an online freelancing platform and you want to be able to pay freelancers, Payoneer is a great solution.

Neteller

Neteller offers a little bit more of a flexible solution than Payoneer because it’s basically like having a virtual bank account as an individual. That’s who it’s primarily for though – individuals; and you can send money to and receive money from other Neteller account holders. You can also get a prepaid debit card (or whomever you’re going to be paying can) with which you can withdraw the money at a local ATM, something which is only available to European residents with Skrill.