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Ask HN: Best payment gateway for small transactions?

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Ask HN: Best payment gateway for small transactions?

#1

Post by Tallianar »

I have a web app that offers a simple service for a one time fee of $0.99. Payment fees are killing me right now as almost 50% of the revenue is going to fees.

I pay $100/month + 3%/transaction + $0.3/transaction.

All the gateways I looked at seem to have a relatively similar fee structure. Because of the low price of the service the $0.3 fee is really huge.

I don't need a store or subscription billing or anything fancy, I just want the customer to pay and I get a ping on an webhook. I really can't increase the product price either. It's a small impulse purchase, making it more expensive would completely remove any appeal.

I looked at:

- Stripe

- Podia

- Gumroad

- Mollie

Any other suggestions? Thank you very much.

Re: Ask HN: Best payment gateway for small transactions?

#2

Post by ssimoni »

I feel your pain. The flat cents make small online transactions hard to do.

If you can add a 30 cent transaction cost at checkout then you are just paying 2.9 percent on the cart price.

I know that isn’t a great answer to your question. “Raise prices”.

I do think there is room for pricing model innovation at the vendors you looked at. But I don’t see it happening in the next few years.

Re: Ask HN: Best payment gateway for small transactions?

#3

Post by Tallianar »

ssimoni wrote: post #2

I feel your pain. The flat cents make small online transactions hard to do. If you can add a 30 cent transaction cost at checkout then you are just paying 2.9 percent on the cart price. I know that isn’t a great answer to your question. “Raise prices”. I do think there is room for pricing model innovation at the vendors you looked at. But I don’t see it happening in the next few years.

That's a real shame... I will consider raising the prices but I am really worried about it because it's really just an impulse purchase for a very small thing and I feel like almost no one will be interested if the price is too high.
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