What is the diffrence between paypal Paypal Payments Standard and Paypal Express Checkout?

Question

I need to implement PayPal on my web page, and I don't know which one to use, Paypal Payments Standard or Paypal Express Checkout or both. To me they seems pretty much the same.

Answer 1

PayPal Payments Standard allows users to pay by card even if they don't have a PayPal account. PayPal Express Checkout requires that users have a PayPal account or create one in order to check out. Both services are detailed on PayPal's merchant page.

You should use PayPal Express Checkout if:

1. You already process regular card payments with a form on your website using another provider (and you're looking to add PayPal as an additional checkout method).
2. You know that the vast majority of your visitors will have PayPal accounts.

You should use PayPal Payments Standard if:

1. You need to be able to take card payments from people without PayPal accounts, but you don't currently offer a way to process cards on your website.
2. If you've read this answer and still don't understand the difference, Payments Standard is probably the one to choose.

You can, of course, include both if you wish, and label the Payments Standard checkout method as 'pay with card' and the Express checkout method as 'pay with PayPal'.