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Ask HN: How do you process payments?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you process payments?

#81

Post by celticmusic »

koolba wrote: post #31
Old_Thrashbarg wrote: post #24

We use Chargebee backed by Stripe. We've been quite happy with Chargebee overall and would recommend them. The only downside is their customer support is very bizarre sometimes and a bit frustrating. For example, they limit API access to my own (events) data to the last N months. I contacted and asked them to remove the restriction, and they said that wasn't possible because the data was "archived". I pointed out tha…

What value do you get from a middle man between you and the raw Stripe API? Why recommend them? From what you describe it just seems like a hassle with them acting as gatekeeper to your own historical transaction records.

Stripe only allows access to the last 30 days of events, it sounds like this 3rd party is offering a service of collecting that for longer (probably among other things).

Re: Ask HN: How do you process payments?

#83

Post by Nesze »

At my current company we use Spreedly to integrate with the payment gateway. Idea is to have multiple payment providers in the background, which is fairly simple with Spreedly (they offer a single API, while large nr of supported psps in the background).

We also vaulting the cards there.

Re: Ask HN: How do you process payments?

#84

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

lopmotr wrote: post #39
ezconnect wrote: post #33

Paypal. Never had issues with them. Only problem is there are a few customers that are dishonest but they are just a couple of them Every year. Average transaction is 15usd

I dare you to try doing a withdrawl while overseas. You may have to prove you're not where you are before they'll reinstate your account.

Done it many times. My entire income (more or less) flows through PayPal, and I manually withdraw at the end of the month, no matter when I am at that time. It has never been a problem.

Re: Ask HN: How do you process payments?

#85

Post by Old_Thrashbarg »

robhunter wrote: post #35
koolba wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value do you get from a middle man between you and the raw Stripe API? Why recommend them? From what you describe it just seems like a hassle with them acting as gatekeeper to your own historical transaction records.

Customers need invoices, A/R tracking, recurring payments, line items on an invoice, billing for multiple entities, adhoc products/add-ons - a billing system and a way to process payments are separate things. I believe Stripe does more and more of this stuff, but it isn't cheap and in our experience Chargebee has perfected a lot of that functionality.

Exactly. I find myself wondering why Stripe is still in the picture, seems like they're doing the easy part.

We use the above-mentioned things, and they also take care of providing a UI where customers can change their plan, cancel it, download PDF invoices. Upon plan changes, they deal with proration. They send dunning emails for failed charges and cancel the plan after N retries. You can set up coupons, discounts, trials, credit, refunds, welcome emails, etc. through them.

Re: Ask HN: How do you process payments?

#86

Post by crtlaltdel »

robhunter wrote: post #35
koolba wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value do you get from a middle man between you and the raw Stripe API? Why recommend them? From what you describe it just seems like a hassle with them acting as gatekeeper to your own historical transaction records.

Customers need invoices, A/R tracking, recurring payments, line items on an invoice, billing for multiple entities, adhoc products/add-ons - a billing system and a way to process payments are separate things. I believe Stripe does more and more of this stuff, but it isn't cheap and in our experience Chargebee has perfected a lot of that functionality.

same here

Re: Ask HN: How do you process payments?

#87

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

100% PayPal, despite the horror stories. Why? Micropayment account alongside regular account. A majority of payments are less than US$12, many are US$1 and on the latter I save 23c per transaction over typical rates (PayPal or other processors).

Customers from Turkey, Pakistan and a few other places are not happy (PayPal banned in their territories), but for the most part, few complaints. Ancient key/value pair API continues to work, which is nice.

Hate their website, hate the lack of ways to get reports, particularly on subscriptions.

Could be done so much better (and likely is), but the micropayment account saves me thousands of dollars a year.

Re: Ask HN: How do you process payments?

#88

Post by shooshoo »

We use both Paypal and Stripe for international (worldwide) payments. Most customers seem to prefer Paypal, and Paypal is set up so that we don't have to do anything - we just receive an email on purchase, while we need a server in the middle for Stripe.

Paypal is significantly more expensive. Recurring subscriptions are really bad (the "vintage" UI is stuck circa 1999).

But what's really bad is that at some point, after 5 or 6 years of significant usage, someone calls us once at 4.30 PM, gets no answer, and flags us as "suspicious". At that point, we could not retrieve any money for the account, could not call anyone (you cannot contact the fraud team - we'll call you back), and it started a lengthy (like, a couple of months) process where we were asked a lot of previous information in order to unlock the account. I mean, I understand you may want/need more information, but you talk to us first and then, if you do not receive good answers, you lock the account. Our bank charges per year way less than PayPal and gives us an account who knows who we are, comes visit yearly, and whose mobile number I have.

So, even if we still use Paypal by popular demand, I'd rather not.

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