Do Online Payment Services 'Penalise' Women for taking Maternity Leave?
By Lisa Day.
Lisa is the owner of Root'd Plants. She founded this business in 2016, it has been through many iterations - including two re-brands and operating from market stalls to a physical storefront and an online store.
Root'd Plants was my first attempt at business. I spent my youth travelling and when I was ready to put down roots, I realised I had fallen in love with plants and wanted to share that with people. I have spent a decade building this business - giving any opportunity a go - albeit making many mistakes, but ultimately leading me to my best and most flexible business model in 2020 (during covid lockdowns): that being e-commerce. With this model, profit margins were optimised and to be honest it greatly suited my lifestyle. Quite quickly, I grew an extremely busy online business bringing in about $500,000 annually.
When I fell pregnant in 2024, I had scaled my business back as I was juggling it in addition to studying naturopathy and working in a health clinic. I decided to leave my position at the health clinic and concentrate on Root'd Plants and my study whilst pregnant. I was already feeling quite stretched and did not want the level of stress I was experiencing whilst growing a child. I was also moving house (including my plant nursery/business) which took 4 months and went into labour the same day that we moved the last truck load to my new residence. Talk about timing!
I knew that I wanted to take maternity leave. I was 39 and had waited a long time to be a mother and wanted to savour the experience and bond with my child. I thought it easier to close business operations rather than hire. As a small business owner you always end up working to some degree, even with the best employees. I knew that this decision would probably see me having to rebuild my business almost from scratch, but I knew that my website was ready to go when I decided to go back to it.
I started using Shopify in 2020 (I had used Squarespace prior to that), and had been utilising PayPal from 2016. When I resumed sales in April of this year, it was pretty straightforward. I just needed to update stock levels and make my site public again. As soon as I started to see transactions on my website, however, straightforward would be the last word I would use to describe my experience with Shop Pay and PayPal.
Due to inactivity, I had lost the merchant trust that I had spent years maintaining and limitations were placed on my income via both of these digital payment platforms. 100% of my income via Shop Pay was placed on hold to be paid a fortnight after the transactions were made, and a limitation on the amount I could withdraw from PayPal ($422/month) was instated.
As any small business owner would know, cashflow is the most important factor in keeping your head above water. In placing these limitations, both PayPal and Shop Pay were making it impossible for me to run my business.
These limitations meant there was very little money to (among a number of other things):
- post orders to customers
- pay for marketing (social media ads)
- pay invoices
- pay myself income
- buy packing material
- buy stock
- buy soil/pots for propagating
- pay utilities
The limitations Shop Pay and Pay Pal instated meant I needed to tap into my already very limited savings (after taking 12 months off) to do the above and that the growth of my business was stalled until they decided to remove their limitations. I received an email after the initial 2 week hold from Shop Pay that stated that I had qualified for faster payments, as fast as 5 business days, however my next lot of payments were placed on hold for 10 days.
I web-chatted and emailed Shop Pay (no phone support) and called Pay Pal and neither party could give me clear instruction on how exactly to get the limitations lifted or a date in which they would be lifted completely. Both of these parties have seemingly forgotten that we are their customers, we the merchants pay the transaction fees and yet we are treated as criminals not customers.
So where does this leave me? I feel this is a massive over-reach that only serves these online payment services. I will be moving away from supporting and utilising them and finding others that serve me better. In the meantime I have added 'Bank Transfer' as a payment option. Choose this option and receive 5% off your order every time!
Remember cash is king (this can also mean transactions without fees).
This reminds me of something I read once. If you start off with a $50 note, and you pay your hairdresser with it. He then pays his butcher, who then spends it at the local grocer. That $50 stays within the community enriching the people in it. When you use your card however, the banks charge 1.5-3% (PayPal charges up to 5%!). Enough transactions will quietly whittle this initial $50 down to $0, lining the banks pockets (or shareholder pockets) instead of those in your community. Australia pays approximately $1.6 billion is bank surcharges each year. Imagine this was being spent amongst every day people, supporting small business - especially in these times, when money seems harder to come by.
So whilst bank transfer may decrease convenience and ease fractionally, it will keep those savings in your back pocket rather than paying it in bank fees. At the very least it will in my store.