Yeah, I looked in the other threads, too, to see if maybe I responded to the wrong one on accident but I’m not finding it. Rather frustrating because it was a very long answer.
Here we go again…
In answer to your question, as it stands now there is no way to disable the Express Checkout button on the cart page unless you go in and customize the plugin code. I have added this to my list for the 1.1.5 update which should be done in a 2 or 3 weeks. If you can’t wait that long and you aren’t comfortable with customizing the plugin yourself you could purchase premium support and I can do it for you. Again, though, with the next update you’ll be able to do this from the settings panel just like you can with product pages and the cart page.
On a separate note, I’d like to provide some feedback to what you mentioned about the reasons you’d like to remove the button from the cart page.
First, I highly doubt you’ll be saving any money steering people towards credit cards. I’ve worked very closely with numerous credit card merchant providers over the past 8 years with my USBSwiper company. We’ve done a lot of research over the years and negotiated with merchant account providers to provide the lowest rates we can, and NONE of them will go lower than PayPal for keyed transactions on a website.
You have to be careful with merchant providers advertising low, teaser rates. They will often display rates of 1% or lower, but that is only for what they call “qualified transactions.” What makes a card qualified is typically when it is physically swiped at the point of sale. “mid-qual” or “non-qual” cards generally fall in the 2% – 5% range, or sometimes even higher. You never really know what you’re going to get charged for a transaction until you get your statement as all card types come with different rates. For example, rewards cards with points/mileage are going to cost you more to accept than a personal debit card.
Keyed cards are never qualified, and the industry avg. seems to be right around 2.2% – 2.5% for keyed cards on a website.
PayPal does things a little differently, where they give you a flat rate based on your volume. If you’re doing $3k – $10k / mo in volume you’ll get 2.5%. If you’re doing $10k – $100k you’ll get 2.2%.
So again, I highly doubt you’ll be saving money by steering people towards credit cards instead of PayPal, and in fact the opposite may very well end up being true.
If you do happen to have a merchant provider offering you lower rates for keyed website transactions I would LOVE to know who they are.
Outside of the transaction fee rates, it has also been proven by extensive studies over the years that providing PayPal options from product pages, cart pages, etc. greatly increases conversion rates on your website. It allows people to skip filling out checkout forms and they can be done with checkout in a matter of seconds.
I’m a perfect example. When I’m shopping online and I’m ready to buy, if I have to get up and go get my credit card…well, I usually don’t. I’ll say “eh, I’ll do it later.” Sometimes I do sometimes I don’t. Many times I end up finding the same product from somebody else who does allow me to use PayPal. It’s more secure for me as a buyer, and it’s a heck of a lot quicker.
So, my professional opinion having dealt with PayPal and online payments for the past 15+ years, and working directly with credit card merchant providers for the past 8+ years, is that you should leave the PayPal Express Checkout buttons enabled throughout the site.
Of course, your experience and opinion may very well be different and that’s perfectly fine. As I mentioned, I’ll add the option to remove the EC button from the cart page in the next update, or you could get premium support if you’d rather have me customize your plugin for you.
