All I Want For Christmas is Alternative Payment Methods

I don’t know if there’s am acronym for Married Couple, Single Debit Card yet, but if I’m going to shop online for my wife’s Christmas gift, I’m going to need to use Bill Me Later or PayPal so she doesn’t know. My wife isn’t sneaky, looking in closets for gifts, but she does keep an eye on our bank account to make sure we’re in good standing. And if there’s some suspicious activity, she’s going to notice.

After we received a gift of See’s Candies in the office, and it was parked in my cube, and I told my wife about it, and my wife reminded me how my mother rations the box she gets for Christmas like it’s the last See’s ever, I decided I should buy her a pound for Christmas.

Only problem was, See’s doesn’t accept Bill Me Later or PayPal. My cover would certainly be blown, unless my wife is too busy this week to check out our checking account and see I made a purchase at Sees.com.

Don’t get me wrong, I made the purchase, and I thought See’s had a very easy-to-use site. I’m a novice when it comes to buying See’s, but I had no problem buying the right gift for my wife (I think, I’ll know soon).

Back in April, I did an article on how alternative payment methods are becoming mainstream. I learned that about half of the top 100 ecommerce sites were using Bill Me Later, and about 34% were letting customers pay with PayPal. These alternative payment methods are growing because customers don’t want to use credit cards.

But if more merchants don’t start accepting alternative payments, they may lose sales from husbands who want to surprise their wives.