Paypal is a good, well known and trusted PayPal processor. I recommend new businesses use it to collect card payments because it is fair in its use, and being well known will increase people’s confidence in using it to pay you.

To gain access to PayPal you only need your user email and password. For such an important system, I like to increase the security by taking advantage of their two-factor authentication

SMS to your mobile.

How this works

• I login to the site with my user name and password as usual.
• I am prompted to send a security token by SMS to my mobile phone.
• I then check my mobile and find the code number
• I put this number into PayPal
• I am now authorised into the PayPal site

This means that a hacker would need my username and password, plus access to SMS messages appearing on my phone.

How to setup

• Goto to ‘Profile and settings’. (From profile menu top right)
• Choose ‘My Account Settings’ (from the left side menu)
• Find security Key and click to update
• You can not register a mobile phone to receive the key
• An SMS will be sent to confirm and you will need to enter this into PayPal
• You will now receive an SMS on this mobile whenever you (or anyone else) tries to log in to your account.

Change your mind

• You can remove your mobile phone at any time.
• You can even have multiple ones registered and chose which sees the SMS
• You can remove all numbers to stop the feature
• You can stop a mobile phone by texting STOP to 729725

Security Key Device

You can order a security key device from Paypal which will create security keys for you. This is a separate physical device and will be popular with corporate users who make use of such devices during their work.