For the most part, people have been able to support us by buying patterns and hand knitted finished items without having a PayPal account without too much issue. However, in certain countries this hasn’t been the case and we’ve had a few people trying several time with different browsers with no success.

While we were confident, given so many people were successful, that there was no issue at our end, some people were never able to move past it and have so far been unable to support us as they’d like.

After researching this a lot deeper, it transpires that the option to pay using a credit/debit card without having a PayPal account isn’t available in some countries, and in others there are transaction limits per card (usually only permitting a certain number of purchases before an account is required). In Canada for example, only a certain number of transactions per card is permitted before an account is required.

This issue was further highlighted once we launched the patterns in Norwegian, kindly translated for us by Margaret. Norway is one such country where this option isn’t available at all using PayPal, only PayPal account holders could support us from there.

With Margaret organising knitting events later in the year, once we knew what the problem was, we were keen to find a solution. Thankfully, the Stripe payment gateway offers the same facility in many countries where the option to make card payments isn’t covered by PayPal. As a customer you don’t need an account, and will now be able to support us by simply using Stripe as your payment method instead.

PayPal is still our preferred method for anyone where this option is available since it avoids transferring the funds. However if PayPal doesn’t work for you, hopefully in your location Stripe will be a welcome alternative. The transaction fees are the same, the only difference is the additional administration of an otherwise avoidable transfer of funds.

Thanks as always for your support, it continues to be incredible.