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Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

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Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#41

Post by sborsje »

We're also using Adyen. The support is pretty good, the API/website/documentation/customization options are all terrible. But it's one of the few PSPs that provides support for lots and lots of payment methods (like: VISA, Amex, MC, PayPal, but also a lot of local stuff like iDeal, Mr. Cash, etc.)

Supporting a local payment method (iDeal in our case) is a pretty big deal in our case, since it accounts for +50% of our total revenue. Don't underestimate this if you're planning to launch a European SaaS business!

Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#42

Post by soitgoes »

horatiumocian wrote: post #37

What about Avangate (www.avangate.com)? I don't know too much about them, so I am not sure if they are what you're looking for.

I've used Avangate. Pretty straightforward to setup; no prerequisites for a gateway or merchant account.

Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#43

Post by rmc »

mhd wrote: post #34
davidvanleeuwen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is so difficult to make it available in Europe? I don't really grasp what the problems are. And is there any way we Europeans can help, besides saying that we want to use your service.

Probably the number of countries in Europe, each of which has a slightly different banking system (never mind the general legal system or language). If I recall correctly, a lot of web services in general aren't even easily accessible for Canadians. I'm not quite sure about the rest of Europe, but payment options in Germany are generally quite different. Credit cards are getting more popular, but most transactions ar…

Probably the number of countries in Europe, each of which has a slightly different banking system (never mind the general legal system or language)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the EU prevent this. Isn't there laws in place to standardize things?

Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#44

Post by davidvanleeuwen »

pitdesi wrote: post #36
davidvanleeuwen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is so difficult to make it available in Europe? I don't really grasp what the problems are. And is there any way we Europeans can help, besides saying that we want to use your service.

Saying that you want to use our service helps us know that it is worth our while, yes... but in terms of issues, there are a few things: The overarching theme is that the payments industry is much more complicated than it seems to the layman. There are a ton of players that you have to interact with, and they are a different set from country to country. The payment systems are surprisingly different on the backend in…

I understand that it's a hard thing to do and it might not be as interesting as the US market. But what is interesting is that the payment/bank industry is far behind on what people want. You guys, Stripe and BankSimple are a good example of changing that.

Obviously there are a lot of people that seriously want to make this happen. So isn't there a way to help you make this work and organize something to gather information about these subjects per country?

Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#45

Post by filipcte »

samwillis wrote: post #12
BSousa wrote: post #11

I already mentioned in the other thread: http://www.saasy.com No direct experience with the service but same guys that offer Fastpring (non recurring) which I recommend!

They seem quite expensive at %5.9 + $0.95

You don't need a merchant account with them and they have subscription handling built-in.

Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#46

Post by davidvanleeuwen »

mendable wrote: post #38

If you are in the UK with a UK bank account, you are going to need a UK gateway and merchant account - unless you relocate. It's just part of the "know your customer" anti-money-laundering deal that all western countries have between their governments and their banks that make it difficult to set up abroad. It might be possible, but it's just extra headache. I would suggest looking at Recurly as your integration endp…

Wow, this is really helpful. I think we will definitely use Recurly (as it is the only service, that doesn't look like crap).

Apparently FlowApp uses Recurly too. So it is possible to make this look nice :)

Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#47

Post by martinkallstrom »

moomerman wrote: post #15

I'm working on https://subsify.com/ to try and fill the gap in recurring payments for UK and EU businesses. At the moment we're only partnered with SagePay as a Payment Gateway so if that sounds good to you get in touch.

You need to work on your presentation. Replacing "try", "working on", and "if that sounds good to you" would go a long way. Like this:

"I have developed https://subsify.com/ which is a service filling the gap in recurring payemnts for UK and EU business. We currently support SagePay as Payment Gateway, which will fulfill the needs of most people. I would encourage anyone struggling with recurring payments in the UK to get in touch, we will probably be able to help you out."

Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#48

Post by mhd »

rmc wrote: post #43
mhd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the number of countries in Europe, each of which has a slightly different banking system (never mind the general legal system or language). If I recall correctly, a lot of web services in general aren't even easily accessible for Canadians. I'm not quite sure about the rest of Europe, but payment options in Germany are generally quite different. Credit cards are getting more popular, but most transactions ar…

Probably the number of countries in Europe, each of which has a slightly different banking system (never mind the general legal system or language) Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the EU prevent this. Isn't there laws in place to standardize things?

There are lots of lawyers who make money just with that, never mind bankers…

Of course there are provisions in place that make it easier for the banks to communicate, as this is in the interest of the banks themselves. That doesn't instantly revoke every odd tax law that came up in each country over the course of a few hundred years of financial history…

Yes, it's possible for me to wire money to anyone in Europe, if I run through a few hoops. And, well, it's not that much harder to wire it to the US or Nigeria.

That doesn't mean that this is the approach you want to take with a customer. You want to make it as easy as possible for the customer to give you money, so it would be great if you'd accept the preferred way to do that in his native country. And as I wrote above, not everybody's preferred way is via credit cards. Never mind that there's still a number of different currencies…

The EU (and esp. the Euro) made it much easier. That doesn't mean it's easy.

Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#49

Post by ch2500 »

mhd wrote: post #48
rmc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the number of countries in Europe, each of which has a slightly different banking system (never mind the general legal system or language) Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the EU prevent this. Isn't there laws in place to standardize things?

There are lots of lawyers who make money just with that, never mind bankers… Of course there are provisions in place that make it easier for the banks to communicate, as this is in the interest of the banks themselves. That doesn't instantly revoke every odd tax law that came up in each country over the course of a few hundred years of financial history… Yes, it's possible for me to wire money to anyone in Europe, if…

Wiring money to anyone in the EU _is_ easy now. Might not be the case for UK people because they still need to deal with foreign currencies ;)

Re: Ask HN: European startup looking for a service for recurring billing

#50

Post by fstephany »

rmoriz wrote: post #39
mendable wrote: post #38

If you are in the UK with a UK bank account, you are going to need a UK gateway and merchant account - unless you relocate. It's just part of the "know your customer" anti-money-laundering deal that all western countries have between their governments and their banks that make it difficult to set up abroad. It might be possible, but it's just extra headache. I would suggest looking at Recurly as your integration endp…

Recurly supports http://WireCard.com , a large German gateway which is able to serve all EU-based corporations.

That's what we are using for our app (http://laskuapp.com). We are based in Belgium. The process with wirecard was quite long but went smoothly and the people we were in contact with were super friendly.
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