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Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

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Re: Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

#21

Post by patio11 »

suking wrote: post #8

Just get a merchant account and program it yourself - it's super easy to do. I don't even understand a need for 3rd party recurring billing companies - programming something to charge someone $X amount every X days is pretty dang easy...

You're right, but that isn't the problem.

+ What if we change gateways?

+ What happens when someone gets a card declined for an unspecified? Retries? What if the error was fatal? Sends an email? Does it cut their service immediately or after a grace period? If they pay on day 2 of the grace period, do they get 30 days of service or 28?

+ What happens if someone wants to upgrade from the $29 / mo account to the $79 / mo account on the 4th of March if their anniversary date was the 25th of February in a leap year?

+ A bug screwed up Bob's data and we're offering him $125 of credit to say we're-so-sorry. You built that feature, right?

+ Our accountant wants to know "How much have we billed this year?", "How much have we collected this year?", and "How much money have we collected that have we not earned yet?" You built that, right?

+ Foo Corp filed a chargeback against payment #123456. This means we got a callback ping and did something consequential as a result of it, right?

+ Why are you answering these questions when you could be writing code that people actually pay for?

Re: Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

#23

Post by timthorn »

smiler wrote: post #16
tomblomfield wrote: post #9

If you're looking to take regular payments from UK customers, check out gocardless.com. We're based on Direct Debit (bank-to-bank payments), so charges are only 1% per transaction We're still in closed trial, but happy to give out invitations to HN users Email me - tom@gocardless.com

This is flawed from the start. 1. Many people will only use a CC online for the additional protection it allows. 2. Many people put all their spending on CC for the various point / bonus schemes they have 3. This limits you to UK people only. Surely the purpose for most people creating a web app is to reach a global audience

True, there are limits - but that doesn't mean it's flawed. 1. DD also provides protection. Admittedly not at the same level, but the banks do guarantee the scheme against misuse. 2. Very true - but if only DD is offered as an ongoing payment mechanism then many people will use it. 3. The UK is a perfectly valid market to target - and hosted DD provision is an excellent innovation to offer.

Re: Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

#24

Post by stefanbutlin »

chrisharis wrote: post #22

Don't think any of the SaaS billing providers today really suite SMBs in cost wise. Merchant account costs, transaction costs, billing provider costs could easily add up to around 10-20% of each transaction.

It doesn't get that expensive.

FastSpring's price is ALL IN. It includes the merchant account, payment gateway and subscription features, and no setup fees nor monthly charges; just the per-transaction costs as noodle commented.

Plus, sign-up and testing is totally free and still gets awesome customer support; you only start paying them anything when you start selling your service. This struck me as ideal for an SMB in its first year.

Re: Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

#25

Post by suking »

patio11 wrote: post #21
suking wrote: post #8

Just get a merchant account and program it yourself - it's super easy to do. I don't even understand a need for 3rd party recurring billing companies - programming something to charge someone $X amount every X days is pretty dang easy...

You're right, but that isn't the problem. + What if we change gateways? + What happens when someone gets a card declined for an unspecified? Retries? What if the error was fatal? Sends an email? Does it cut their service immediately or after a grace period? If they pay on day 2 of the grace period, do they get 30 days of service or 28? + What happens if someone wants to upgrade from the $29 / mo account to the $79 /…

1) auth.net is always safe

2) you set it to whatever you want

3) easy - you decide - probably pro-rate

4) credits are easy

5) select sum(amount) from charges where date='this year'... the other thing is just accounting by dates, up to individual company... easy reporting by date

6) chargeback you get a fax or letter - respond back and keep templates for each case - EASY

7) b/c then you're not paying someone else for a trivial service.

Re: Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

#26

Post by fastspring »

risratorn wrote: post #10
gizmo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the part where UK != EU. Fastspring is available in all EU countries, I think, but Amazon FPS is available only in the UK. Not in Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, France, I think. Paypal Business Payments? UK Yes, rest of europe? Nope. Basically, for the table to be useful to people from the EU it would have to have a column for every EU country. Also, the PCI compliance part is not very accurate. You can get PCI…

Are there actually any modern payment gateways available worldwide that don't suck? I've tried Paypal and Ogone and they both are a serious hassle. How i would loooove stripe or wepay to become available worldwide!

SaaSy supports all countries the US can do business with. 10+ currencies, 20 languages, global tax management, etc.

Re: Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

#27

Post by dirtyaura »

If you need target Germany or Nordic countries, checkout Klarna https://klarna.com/en/business

They have ok APIs, although they are e-commerce focused.

They also just got a whopping 155 million dollar investment from DST and earlier investment round is from Sequoia. I'd expect them to open up in new countries soon. http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/12/09/klarna-receives-155-...

Re: Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

#28

Post by MattRob »

smiler wrote: post #16
tomblomfield wrote: post #9

If you're looking to take regular payments from UK customers, check out gocardless.com. We're based on Direct Debit (bank-to-bank payments), so charges are only 1% per transaction We're still in closed trial, but happy to give out invitations to HN users Email me - tom@gocardless.com

This is flawed from the start. 1. Many people will only use a CC online for the additional protection it allows. 2. Many people put all their spending on CC for the various point / bonus schemes they have 3. This limits you to UK people only. Surely the purpose for most people creating a web app is to reach a global audience

As a heads up I'm from GC but as quick responses:

1) It's little known but the protection under DD are arguably stronger than those under cc (http://www.bacs.co.uk/bacs/businesses/directdebit/collecting...); but your point still holds for as long as this remains little known ;)

2) Fair point, although this varies a lot by country (consider CC usage in Germany) and is not the case for B2B transactions

3) No it doesn't. There's a pan-European ACH network (SEPA DD), also if you look at PayPal they offer Bank transfer in US & Europe using ACH in a similar way

Re: Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

#29

Post by chrisharis »

stefanbutlin wrote: post #24
chrisharis wrote: post #22

Don't think any of the SaaS billing providers today really suite SMBs in cost wise. Merchant account costs, transaction costs, billing provider costs could easily add up to around 10-20% of each transaction.

It doesn't get that expensive. FastSpring's price is ALL IN. It includes the merchant account, payment gateway and subscription features, and no setup fees nor monthly charges; just the per-transaction costs as noodle commented. Plus, sign-up and testing is totally free and still gets awesome customer support; you only start paying them anything when you start selling your service. This struck me as ideal for an SMB…

Great to hear it worked for you. But in my case if I'm selling 3k per month with $5-10 per user, one option would charge me around $270 and other around $500. Not really good for micro payment based products.

And this isn't about SaaSy. It's same with all services out there.

Re: Online payment options for SaaS (includes those supported in UK)

#30

Post by redguava »

suking wrote: post #25
patio11 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but that isn't the problem. + What if we change gateways? + What happens when someone gets a card declined for an unspecified? Retries? What if the error was fatal? Sends an email? Does it cut their service immediately or after a grace period? If they pay on day 2 of the grace period, do they get 30 days of service or 28? + What happens if someone wants to upgrade from the $29 / mo account to the $79 /…

1) auth.net is always safe 2) you set it to whatever you want 3) easy - you decide - probably pro-rate 4) credits are easy 5) select sum(amount) from charges where date='this year'... the other thing is just accounting by dates, up to individual company... easy reporting by date 6) chargeback you get a fax or letter - respond back and keep templates for each case - EASY 7) b/c then you're not paying someone else for…

Your time is worth money. There is always going to be a magic number that makes it worthwhile to pay someone to do something than to do it yourself. There is a good chance these recurring billing systems fall under that magic number.

If you're not sure how to work out that magic number, just work out how much it costs you to live for 2 weeks, if this is going to take you 2 weeks to develop, there's your number.

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