For the first time, Highpointers will be able to use credit cards to pay for reservations to the Illinois 2003 convention if they make them online using Paypal.
First time Paypal users will actually find that this will be the cheapest way to make reservations because of a $5 rebate Paypal is offering new users.
Because we are using a third party e-commerce solution, existing Paypal users will be paying $1 extra fee for each reservation although of there's the convenience doing the whole transaction online.
For those are unfamiliar with Paypal, Paypal is one of the big success stories of the Internet because it permits people to transfer funds via email. To get started you answer a simple questionnaire giving your name and address and setting up a password. You follow an instant email confirmation process. Then you're ready to go. All you have to do is fund your transaction with a credit card or if you have optionally chosen from a checking account. The transfer is done via a secured encrypted server and is insured up to $100,000 (you will have to make a lot of Illinois reservations).
There is no charge to you to send this money. There is no annual maintenance charge or minimums. The entire transaction (including Paypal registration) can be handled when you use our secure order form at:
https://highpointers.org/convention/2003/illinois-2003.shtml
Paypal is widely used by auction site Ebay. In fact Ebay bought Paypal last year and maintains it.
Once you have a Paypal account you can use it to transfer money to (and from) the kids, grandkids or buy/sell climbing gear at Ebay or whatever. There's no charge to send or receive money on the standard account and there's no maintenance fee.
The only catch on the standard Paypal account is that you can only receive transfers funded by checking account transfers. If you want to ***receive*** transfers via ***credit cards*** you will have to get the premier account which charges a small fee for the credit card transfers but no other additional fees. There is never an additional charge to fund an outgoing transfer via credit card.
Since Paypal is a widely accepted and low risk
method to accept credit cards and because the software to manage the transactions
is simple and eloquent, you may see it popping it up in other places on
Highpointers.Org such as the membership section and HP.Merc if we see the
Illinois 2003 effort is a success.