For years, PayPal has been a default option at checkout, for us and for most of the web. It’s familiar, it’s convenient, and for a long time it was worth the cost. As of December 2025, we’ve discontinued PayPal as a payment method at WebWorld. This post explains why.
The numbers stopped adding up
Payment processing is a cost of doing business, and we’ve never had a problem with paying a fair rate for a reliable service. What changed is the size of that rate.
Across our recent transactions, PayPal fees averaged 5.13%, with individual transactions reaching as high as 7.8%. For comparison, standard card processing typically sits in the low single digits, often around 1.5–2.5% depending on the card type and region.
On a hosting renewal or a domain registration, that difference is the margin. On a low-value transaction, it can exceed it entirely.
There are only two ways to absorb a cost like that: raise prices, or stop paying it. We chose the second.
Keeping prices honest
We’d rather not be in a position where customers paying by card are quietly subsidising the cost of customers paying by PayPal, or where everyone’s prices creep upward to cover one expensive payment rail. Removing PayPal lets us keep our pricing where it is, and keep it transparent.
What you can use instead
Checkout remains simple. You can pay using:
- All major debit and credit cards – Visa, Mastercard, and others
- Direct debit – convenient for recurring services
- Cryptocurrency – a range of options supported
Nothing else about your account, your services, or your billing cycle changes.
If you have a PayPal subscription
This is the one thing that needs action on your side.
If you currently pay for a Web World service through a PayPal subscription (recurring billing agreement), please cancel that subscription and set up an alternative payment method at your earliest convenience. Leaving it in place risks a failed renewal and a possible interruption to your service.
You don’t have to work this out alone. We’ll be contacting every customer with an active PayPal subscription directly over the coming weeks to help make the switch. If you’d rather not wait, you can update your payment method now from the client portal, or get in touch and we’ll sort it for you.
Thank you
Decisions like this are never taken lightly, and we know that removing a familiar option is an inconvenience for some. But our priority is a service that stays simple, transparent, and affordable and this change protects all three.
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