Taking payments online in Europe in 2013 • Hacker News Board

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#121

Post by chmike » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 4:42 PM UTC

chmike wrote: post #22

Paymill is germany only.

why the downvote ? My comment was based on what is written in the grey box on top of this page https://www.paymill.com/fr-fr/documentation-3/introduction/b...

You should consider that direct debit as a payment method needs an activation process of about 7-14 days. Therefor you won’t be able to use direct debit without completed activation process. Please note too that this service is only available in Germany right now!

EDIT: checking the terms of service fine printed at the bottom of the page I finally found this

3.1 The merchant receives the right of use to the Paymill platform limited to the duration of the contract, territorially restricted to the following countries, which is non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, non-transferrable and non-assignable. Countries in scope: Andorra, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Israel, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Czech Rep., Turkey, UK, Hungary, Cyprus (Greek part), Vatikan City (State). The right of use is valid for access to the platform via the Internet and for use of the functionalities associated with the Paymill platform in accordance with the regulations of this contract and the documentation. The merchant shall be entitled to use the documentation solely for the connection of the utilized data processing system to the Paymill platform and to store the data transmitted to the merchant via the Paymill platform on its data processing system or a data processing system of a third party authorized by the merchant.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#122

Post by abcd_f » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:02 PM UTC

chmike wrote: post #121

chmike wrote: post #22

Paymill is germany only.

why the downvote ? My comment was based on what is written in the grey box on top of this page https://www.paymill.com/fr-fr/documentation-3/introduction/b... You should consider that direct debit as a payment method needs an activation process of about 7-14 days. Therefor you won’t be able to use direct debit without completed activation process. Please note too that this service is only available in Germany right n…

direct debit

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#123

Post by Cherian_Abraham » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

jmaskell wrote: post #104

patio11 wrote: post #87

Vinetrade has the kind of business model that scares banks and card payment providers. We trade high value goods (prices in the region of £1.5-20k) that are rarely delivered to the buyer (they're stored in remote warehouses). I love virtually all startups and wish for their success. That said: I'm thinking that when every bank in Creation was saying "We won't take CC payments for that. No, no, you simply can't convin…

There were two big problems with the banks: 1. A number of wine investment companies took card payments but never bought the wine. So the bank was liable for the money lost in those situations - and as a result that put a blanket ban on all fine wine companies. We were able to talk Barclays around on this. 2. Storage of wine would be handled by a third party warehouse. If they screwed anything up (e.g. broke the case…

Have you looked at 192Business from a fraud/authentication perspective?

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#124

Post by zimbatm » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:09 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #88

zimbatm wrote: post #80

One big missing pain: EU VAT taxes. According to the law you're supposed to tax EU customers if your business is in the EU. Obviously the tax is different for each country and changes from year to year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_of_Europe . Businesses with a VAT ID can be exempted from the tax but only if they provide a valid VAT ID. At the end of the year your business then provides the list of transac…

As far as I understand it, you can check and are expected to observe and note anything odd about transactions with supplied VAT numbers but AFAIK - and I'm not a lawyer! - there's no law that you must check every one. (Note: This may be a UK specific interpretation.) However, if they turn out to be false and the tax man comes back to you, you could be liable for the VAT. Depending on your sales profile, you might con…

Thanks. We'll see at the end of next year :) (UK-based too)

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#125

Post by jusben1369 » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:11 PM UTC

chmike wrote: post #121

chmike wrote: post #22

Paymill is germany only.

why the downvote ? My comment was based on what is written in the grey box on top of this page https://www.paymill.com/fr-fr/documentation-3/introduction/b... You should consider that direct debit as a payment method needs an activation process of about 7-14 days. Therefor you won’t be able to use direct debit without completed activation process. Please note too that this service is only available in Germany right n…

The down-votes come because you assert a fact that is incorrect and can meaningfully impact the supplier and folks reading here. Perhaps "It looks like PayMill is Germany only?" is a better approach.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#126

Post by mattmanser » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

stevoski wrote: post #114

jusben1369 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal, PayMill, Braintree etc are all 3rd party payment processors. So I don't quite understand your distinction. I believe FastSpring may mean you avoid having to get a merchant account directly so perhaps that's the difference you see? The biggest objection I've heard is the 9% flat rate they take vs 3% and 30 cents per transaction that you'd roughly see from a payment processor.

The cost for a payment processor 3% and 30 cents per transaction PLUS the costs (time-related, development-related, support-related) to manage to obtain a merchant account, deal with VAT, fraud detection, a nice customer experience, and many other things. For startups you end up way ahead by NOT rolling your own solution to this and other problems.

9% of your turnover vs ~ 3.1% of your turnover.

You're a mad man to pay that much. It's a right pita, but it's not worth 6% of your company.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#127

Post by samwillis » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:18 PM UTC

webignition wrote: post #89

samwillis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I did, I launched in December with PayPal. Moving to Stripe as soon as they launch, although I am now tempted to keep PayPal as a payment option for people who feel more comfortable using it. I will be an interesting experiment to see if anyone would still use it.

This is what I'm currently planning on doing for handling monthly (possibly annual) subscriptions. Do you handle subscriptions and if so do you have any plans for handling moving the subscriptions from PayPal to Stripe? If I were just to be handling one-off payments I'd not particularly care who I chose to go with (within reason). With subscriptions this gets, I believe, a bit trickier.

Nope, we just have one off payments.

If I were doing subscriptions I would still go with paypal and wait for stripe (unless I have investment and going to be big). You then just prompt your users to move over at some point. Its a little more work to maintain the paypal code for existing user who don't move but with some encouragement like a month free you may be able to get them all over.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#128

Post by JoelJacobson » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:37 PM UTC

It's easy to forget, just offering VISA/Mastercard won't be enough in a lot of European countries.

Online bank e-payment is the preferred method by customers in quite a few European countries.

Most PSPs only offer bank payment services requiring the merchant to sign up with each and every bank in each country, but there are a few PSP where you only need ONE single merchant agreement to offer payment by bank in _all_ the countries the PSP provides.

List of payment companies offering online bank payments via single merchant agreement:

Trustly.com: Spain, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Poland Payment-Network.com: Germany, Austria EUTeller.com: Finland

If you know if any additional online bank e-payment companies covering European countries, please reply. Thanks!

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#129

Post by pbreit » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

The OP is still being naive. For 1.5k-20k transactions, you have to pretty much do (or at least start) payments the old fashioned way: 1) vet buyers and 2) wire transfers, bank transfers or checks. Going with the payment startup du jour is not prudent.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#130

Post by krmmalik » Mon, Jan 21, 2013, 5:43 PM UTC

Fantastic write-up. Thanks for doing this. I was searching for an article exactly like this and it's good that i can learn from your experiences of the newer providers. I've used Worldpay, SagePay/ProtX and Paypal in the past and completely understand your frustrations.

Wish we had a dwolla equivalent too.