Paypal standard w/ existing merchant account

Someone suggested that I add paypal as an option since many people like using it.

I currently have a merchant account and accept payments online. I already have an account with paypal and they have the standard option where you don't pay a monthly fee or setup account and you can have customer pay using paypal.

I am only seeing buttons for "add to cart"...and others that don't pertain to me. I don't need a "add to cart" since I already have them. Won't there end up being too "add to cart" buttons if I do set up paypal with that option?

I am trying to figure out how to keep my current cart yet have a button when it is time to pay "or pay using paypal" (name of button or something similar).

I have contacted paypal and the rep told me that I cannot have a button that just says "pay with paypal". I have to use the "add to cart". I explained to her that I already have those buttons since I already accept payments online and that I have seen sites that do have this option...where customers are given a choice to pay with paypal. She then told me that I would have to contact the people who developed the cart...that it is possible but I would have to some kind of html coding to fix it to the way I want using the "add to cart" button option.

Does anyone know how to do the task I am trying to do? All I want is to give customers the option to pay on my site or with paypal.

Does anyone currently offer direct payment on their site as well as paypal?

Does anyone know what the paypal rep was talking about? If you know how to do this can you contact me and tell me how to do it or give me contact info so I can go to your site or personal email to discuss possible business?

If there is a way and you wouldn't mind giving me the steps, please break them down. I am very new to all of this.
I don't want to use their express checkout...too costly for me at this time. I want to see if this may increase sales any.

Thanks!:blink:

I think from what you say, that you are talking about the Paypal supplied buttons for ordinary websites which allows a customer to place an order for something displayed.... in effect a sort of half shopping cart system focused primarily on the payment process.

You could probably get away with putting such buttons on each product page in Zen Cart but it would be a very clunky system and those orders would not be completed in Zen Cart thus you lose the ability to keep track of inventory, total sales, updating of your order status, etc. for those specific orders.

What you want is built into ZenCart 1.3.8a. This simply adds the option to pay by Paypal during checkout (in addition to your merchant account which would be another option for the customer). The customer will see that you offer both payment methods during the checkout process. In ZenCart Paypal IPN is just another payment module completely integrated to the point where you get confirmation of payments, refunds, etc posted directly back into your Zencart system. You have all your records in one place.

Take a look here for more info on Paypal on Zencart:
http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/PayPal

There is also another Paypal payment module called PayPal Express which speeds the checkout process a bit. http://www.zen-cart.com/getpaypal

If you don't have ZenCart 1.3.8a installed, you can still install PayPal IPN in versions 1.3.5 and above (not sure about earlier versions).

Thanks. I wasn't sure how the paypal mod worked. I was a bit confused. It didn't help when I called paypal. It seems as if that mod is all I need since I do already have an account with paypal...and it is great because I don't have to pay those crazy fees. You all have been a great help. Thanks for clearing things up for me.