61–70 of 182 posts
Unfortunately PayPal is pretty much an unregulated bank and there are a number of horror stories about them closing accounts, freezing funds and making life very difficult for entrepreneurs. Actually, in Europe, paypal IS a registered, regulated bank in Luxembourg. That, to me, makes it more credible.
Unfortunately PayPal is pretty much an unregulated bank and there are a number of horror stories about them closing accounts, freezing funds and making life very difficult for entrepreneurs. Actually, in Europe, paypal IS a registered, regulated bank in Luxembourg. That, to me, makes it more credible.
So what does that mean in practice?
Not to forget the other half of the story: issuing invoices. In Europe this can quickly become a pain, not only due to the extra information you need to collect (names, addresses and so on) but especially if you also need to collect Value Added Tax (VAT). This means asking for VAT IDs for companies - if they have them - and then calculating the tax based on whether the customer is in the same country as you or not. T…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you hearing that suggests Stripe may not be too far off? I'll soon be in the process of adding payment options to a new UK-based startup and really really really want to believe that Stripe will be an option for me in time.
I wasn't expecting this response, as I had heard from other sources previously that their best bet for UK / European expansion would be to buy out someone else, but I can't really argue with this: https://twitter.com/cjc/status/292350613939953666
I asked only a few days ago how soon is soon, to which no-one will actually answer. But the Stripe guy did say that he agreed that we shouldn't wait... go implement something else, and then they will help people move to them post-launch.
So don't not launch something in the UK because you're waiting for Stripe. Launch with GoCardless, launch with PayMill, hell... launch with PayPal if you have to.
Getting money through the door should be the only focus, not waiting for other people.
Does anyone have any experience with the user experience side of GoCardless? Do customers have any issues entering their account number and sort code, rather than the usual card information? I really like GoCardless but feel that customers might be hesitant to enter that information, especially when they're not used to doing it.
Hey - one of the founders of GoCardless here. We have found that conversion can be just as good, if not better than cards in the right cases. The biggest factor that affects this is transaction type. We see really great conversion for repeat billing where Direct Debit is already a well known method of payment. Conversion is not as good for one-off payments where DD is less expected though.
I was considering GoCardless but a survey of my customers stopped me.
I don't think i saw someone mentioning http://www.ogone.com Their solution is a bit oldfashioned ... needing to skin one of their pages and send over the customer for processing but they offer plenty of payment options like debet & webbanking payment options
Not to forget the other half of the story: issuing invoices. In Europe this can quickly become a pain, not only due to the extra information you need to collect (names, addresses and so on) but especially if you also need to collect Value Added Tax (VAT). This means asking for VAT IDs for companies - if they have them - and then calculating the tax based on whether the customer is in the same country as you or not. T…
Oh, VAT, how I hate you so! You'd think if the tax authorities were going to saddle us all with worrying about other countries' VAT rules, they could at least provide a list of the ISO country codes and applicable tax rates we need to charge in a format that could easily be imported into a database. Some sort of simple automatic notification system for when the rules change would be useful too. At least that way, eve…
I'm in talks with one of the others on that list because I need Amex support.. but in the UK PayPal also do a tier called "Website Payments Pro". It's not the same as a vanilla PayPal account and includes a merchant account and API for doing card transactions. You have to go through screening to be accepted and I've found them to be very professional and helpful (as in, a far better service than the vanilla PayPal se…
Who is using Amex? Corporates?
* Verified by VISA with my VISA card redirects to a third party domain (not the retailer or my bank) which then asks for DOB and very basic details to set a password (and little more is needed to reset the password). Even if fundamentally secure the user education message of this process is awful. I believe that some card providers make better use and of Verified by VISA mechanisms but not all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you loathe to use them?
Because it's a company founded by the Samwer brothers. A simple Google search of that name will tell you all you need to know.
Ideas aren't worth that much (the majority of their businesses are actually "old" ideas like ecommerce), execution and speed is what matters. They're brilliant at it and deserve a ton of respect for it.