According to the PayPal support person I spoke to earlier this week PayPal is planning to make their Website Payments Pro service available to Australian businesses at the end of year.
PayPal Website Payments Pro is PayPal's version of a payment gateway allowing you to process credit card payments without making customers leave your site. This service has been available to businesses in the US and UK for a few years now and with a bit of luck Australian businesses will also be able to use the service.
Website Payments Pro is a fair bit easier and cheaper to set up than a normal payment gateway because you don’t need to go through the hassle of getting an internet merchant account with your bank and then getting a payment gateway to process the payments from your shopping cart. The difference is that the payments will be stored in your PayPal account until you manually withdraw them, whereas with a traditional setup the funds go straight into your bank account.
However the main benefit that it gives Australian businesses is being able to sell in other currencies (like USD and GBP). Unless you're willing to spend a lot of money with the NAB, charging in anything other than AUD has been out of reach for most Australian businesses.
