I can just hear PayPal singing: "Daisy Daisy, Give me your answer do! I'm half crazy, All for the love of you!..." Slower and slower and sllooowwwweeeeerrrrrr. Hal, wake up!

I've noticed over that last month or so that PayPal has been slowing down. When I first noticed, I was a little concerned that I might be losing sales to people who figure my payment links are dead, so I added a message that displays after they click to let them know they're being sent to my payment processor and that it may take a few seconds.

I don't know whether that made a difference or not, nor in fact whether the slowdown has had an impact, but I've heard of other people who accept payments through PayPal and some other method who've seen the percentage of payments shift dramatically from PayPal to the other processor.

What I do know has made a difference for me...well, yesterday at least...is that their IPN ("instant payment notification") notifications were, well, not "instant". As a result, customers arriving at my download page after purchase were being kept waiting while my system waited for confirmation that they'd actually paid. So I got tech support tickets on the issue and had to email the product out.

I hope they get things back up to speed soooooooon...