Choose PayPal when its merchant account, available payment methods and hosted checkout fit the way your customers buy. Evaluate Checkout.com when its payment offering and commercial agreement fit your business. Both offer payment links without writing code. Neither comparison should stop at the appearance of the checkout page: decide who owns the product, invoice, delivery and refund after payment.
This guide is for sellers selecting a new payment workflow, including businesses selling by email or social messages. Checkout.com is a different company from Verifone's 2Checkout; their packages and commercial terms are not interchangeable.
Compare the actual payment-link offer
PayPal's payment-link documentation describes creating a product or service link in a business account, setting the price and sharing a PayPal-hosted checkout. Availability depends on the merchant's country and account. Use the business payment product rather than assuming a personal money-request link provides the same sales journey.
Checkout.com Payment Links can be created in its Dashboard or through an API, with single-use or multi-use links. The hosted page supports branding. An API is an option, not a requirement for every merchant sending a link.
| Decision | Ask PayPal | Ask Checkout.com |
|---|---|---|
| Can this business join? | Is this seller, country and offer eligible? | Will this entity and business model be accepted? |
| Can customers pay? | Which methods appear for the actual buyer? | Which contracted methods are enabled on the link? |
| Can staff operate it? | Who creates and reconciles merchant links? | Who gets Dashboard access and manages link use? |
| What follows payment? | Which system delivers the product or service? | Which system delivers the product or service? |
These are purchasing questions, not results of a live checkout test. A provider's global method list does not prove that every method appears for your account.
Give every kind of sale a completion rule
Consider a hypothetical business with sixty orders in a month: forty downloadable guides, twelve fixed-price consultations and eight custom projects. This is an original planning example, not customer data. Every order might start with a link, but the work after payment differs.
| Order group | What payment proves | What the selling workflow still needs |
|---|---|---|
| 40 guide orders | An identified payment reached the required status | The correct edition, protected file access and a recovery route |
| 12 consultations | The agreed amount was paid | An agreed time and instructions; payment alone does not reserve a slot |
| 8 custom projects | The named stage or amount was paid | Scope approval, milestones and remaining balance |
Create one sample record for each group before committing to a provider. Write the offer name, price/currency, payment reference, completion condition and responsible person. A generic successful-payment email is insufficient if the promise was immediate file delivery.
Then review an incomplete payment, an accidental repeat payment and a refund request. Decide which system records the outcome and who communicates with the buyer. Do not release a paid file simply because the browser returned to a thank-you page.
Ask for a comparable commercial quote
Checkout.com's pricing page offers tailored terms rather than one universal merchant rate. Compare it with the applicable PayPal commercial rate for your country, transaction type and currency. Avoid importing a US domestic rate into a UK or European calculation.
Use the same example sales mix for both quotes. Record domestic cards, foreign cards, wallets, currency conversion, refunds and disputes separately. If a quoted arrangement includes other charges or minimums, add those explicitly.
For each payment category, calculate transaction count × fixed charge + payment value × percentage charge, then add separately quoted items. This formula is a worksheet, not a fee quotation. Where a quote uses interchange-plus-plus, request the expected interchange, scheme and processor components rather than forcing it into an invented flat rate.
Add the cost of the software that actually delivers your offer. A lower processing percentage does not finish the forty download orders if employees still email every file manually. Conversely, do not buy a broader selling platform when your existing order system already does that job well.
When PayRequest belongs in the decision
PayRequest payment links provide a hosted collection workflow using supported payment providers. PayRequest is separate software, not another name for PayPal or Checkout.com, and this article does not claim a Checkout.com integration. Confirm the supported provider and account eligibility before choosing it.
For a guide sold with automatic download access, evaluate PayRequest digital products, not just an amount-only link. The currently published file limit is 50MB for PDF, ZIP or EPUB, with one file per product. This is not a substitute for large-video hosting, complex warehouse fulfillment or a merchant-of-record agreement.
Current PayRequest plans list Free at €0 with a 2% standard payment fee, Premium at €5/month and Business at €20/month. Active paid plans have a 0% standard platform fee; payment-provider charges and commission-payment exceptions remain separate. Digital products require an eligible paid plan. Account creation or selecting a plan does not by itself activate paid access.
Choose the route that finishes your sale
Keep the provider-only route when you already have reliable ordering, fulfillment and customer support. Compare a selling workflow when collecting money is easy but identifying the purchase and completing the promise is still manual.
Before moving all sixty hypothetical orders, prepare one representative offer and document the required payment and delivery outcomes. If PayRequest fits, create your account through the article's signup action, complete setup and check your eligible provider before sharing the first customer link.
Editorial note: AI assisted with this article and illustrative cover. Official provider pages and PayRequest's public feature contracts were reviewed on 3 November 2026. The sixty-order model is hypothetical; no account onboarding, live purchase or customer outcome is claimed.
