There are alternatives..
I continue to use Paypal because there aren't any great alternatives - but I believe in the future there will be.
Here are two alternatives..
http://depositguard.com
https://squareup.com
One is an escrow company that charges the tenant a 3% transaction fee.
The other is a merchant account that is available to anyone..
I was one of those rental brokers that had used paypal routinely without a single dispute or chargeback request. I paid thousands in paypal fees. And I have a very long history with eBay. When the timeshare section was originally designed, the company I worked for consulted the then head of eBay real estate, Dave Coglizer, to develop the timeshare platform- and I've been contacted numerous times over the years by ebay to provide information about various timeshare systems.
Without any notice, I was simply informed that because my account was used for timeshare transactions which are now classified as high risk- a six month hold requirement was being placed on my account. This means that any payments sent to me would be held by paypal for six months without any interest being paid to me.
I was fortunate in that I was able to deal with this issue and had the means to still be able to pay all my owners out of pocket, but I imagine this could have serious impacts on either rental brokers as well as individuals who use the rental payments to pay their maintenance fees or business expenses.
I spoke with my legal counsel, and was told that since PayPal is not considered to be a financial institution, they are not bound by traditional banking regulations and have the ability to simply withhold payments as they see fit for as long as they deem necessary.
I have since spoken with several other rental brokers and a few individual renters who have also had their accounts "investigated" and a similar hold placed on the funds held by PayPal because the accounts were used primarily for "timeshare" transactions. Their actions seem to be sporadic however, as there are other brokers who do a similar volume in rentals that have not been subjected to this hold.
While this situation was extremely frustrating to me personally, I also understand the need for this type of action. The amount of fraud perpetrated on eBay may well require such drastic action be taken. And historically, their decisions are always heavily weighted on the side of the purchaser- not the seller..
In truth- I consider myself very fortunate to have had to deal with this. It took some searching, but the alternatives I found have been fantastic and have actually saved me thousands of dollars in company expense.
If Denise removes the links above- feel free to email me and I'll be happy to send them to you directly.