Receive one-time payments without credit card or paypal

My company takes payments via credit card and Paypal, but occasionally we have international customers who do not have a credit card (or debit card with Visa or Mastercard logo) and do not have a Paypal account. What's the easiest way to accept $100 or less one-time payment for a B2C company excluding credit/debit cards and Paypal.

My assumption is for a transaction of $50 or less that international wire transfers will be cost prohibitive. Either you will lose all margin (and probably take a loss on the sale) or you will pass it on to the customer (my recommendation) which will likely double the price of your product.

The easiest was for a consumer customer trying to make a $50 or less purchase over the internet without the use of a credit card or a gateway like paypal is for the customer to put cash, a check, a travelers check, or a money order into an envelop and mail it to you. When you receive it you can deposit into your account (if a check you can wait until funds clear) and then you can provide your product to them.

If the consumer is concerns about the safety associated with sending a check or cash in the mail, you can politely recommend they consider getting a one-time use debit card which provides someone the ability to pay for the use of a "credit card" number without carrying or qualifying for a "credit card"

That will be the easiest and most convenient way based on your business requirements.

Western Union or a similar service, also electronic transfers if the purchases a worth the trouble.

Assuming you are in the US, most banks (but not all) can directly accept wire transfers which are very popular everywhere except the US. Before you agree to accept a wire transfer you must :

• Check with your bank to see what type of fee they will charge you to receive an international wire transfer. These fees can range from $5 to $75 or more! Make sure the fee makes snese for your business, before telling your customer you will acept payment in this fashion.
• You need to get your banks SWIFT code and your account number. If your bank does not have its own SWIFT code do not acept wire transfers- it will be next to impossible to figure out what happens when there is an error if that is the case.
• You need on line electronic banking to check the status of the wire transfer. Unlike other counties, some US banks (but not all) give you next to no information except a deposit amount. You need to keep on top of this to manage the deposit.
• You will need to inform your customer that wire transfers in the US take much longer to complete than they do elsewhere.

If this is too hard to do, you can always have them send you cash by Western Union or they can go to their bank and get a check drawn on a US bank and payable in US dollars- which they mail to you. Checks written in another country, and/or in a currency other than US dollars, will incure a bank fee to collect. This fee varies based on the country the check comes from and their currency. This fee will always be more than the cost of having the check drawn on a US bank and payable in US dollars. (They can get checks like that in virtually any country.)

If your customers can get their hands on Bitcoins, then you can accept them and exchange them back into USD (though do it fast, as the exchange rates do fluctuate)

A quick Google search for "buy bitcoins with cash" returned a lot of results which your clients can use.

You can also charge via premium SMS messages, but its more of a hassle to set up, and not worthwhile if you rarely sell to such customers.

Ah - you ever heard ot that thing called "bank account"? International transfers between bank accounts are standard practice. IO get pretty much all our revenue via bank transfers. Actually ALL of it. And a business without bank account... ;) That is radical even for a startup.