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Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

jamesmaskell.co.uk

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Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#131

Post by dangrossman »

gambiting wrote: post #120
return0 wrote: post #51

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.

No normal bank can hold your founds for 180 days for "review". If any bank in any EU country tried to do that, they could get sued to hell. Yet paypal can get away with it, but how? I don't know.

The 180 day hold is standard practice. Virtually all US merchant account agreements have clauses specifying when a reserve account, holding part or all of the merchant's transactions, will be established (when? at the processor's discretion, really). If the merchant is terminated, funds in that account are held for up to 180 days to cover future chargebacks. PayPal inherited that from the two banks underwriting all their accounts -- Wells Fargo NA and JP Morgan Chase. The policy predates PayPal's founding, and isn't anything unusual.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#132

Post by shtylman »

You should look into bitcoin (at least know about it and how it can help you as a merchant). Any payment company that deals with credit cards is not just a payment company but a fraud detection service; at least that is what it should be selling themselves as. Fighting CC fraud (and bank transfer fraud) is a challenge as the system was not designed for the digital space.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#133

Post by namdnay »

Xylakant wrote: post #71
bad_user wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain a little bit more about what's the problem with debit cards in Europe? I have a MasterCard debit card with which I never, ever had problems making payments and I have made such payments, either direct or through PayPal, Google Wallet or iTunes. Before this I had a Visa debit card issued by the same bank (Groupe Société Générale). Before this I had another debit card issued by another bank. All of th…

A mastercard debit card works much like a credit card. In germany for example, your standard "debit card" is your banks card and in online transactions, you just enter bank account and the banks identifier. It's a legacy way of paying that dates back to the eurocheques. It's comparable to the Card Bleue in France which is a system that exists pretty much in France only. This fragments the market.

The Carte Bleue system is more or less deprecated/integrated now, AFAIK they can all be treated as Visa cards

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#134

Post by return0 »

gambiting wrote: post #120
return0 wrote: post #51

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.

No normal bank can hold your founds for 180 days for "review". If any bank in any EU country tried to do that, they could get sued to hell. Yet paypal can get away with it, but how? I don't know.

If they did that to you, you should sue them. They are a bank like all others

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#135

Post by descala »

shtylman wrote: post #132

You should look into bitcoin (at least know about it and how it can help you as a merchant). Any payment company that deals with credit cards is not just a payment company but a fraud detection service; at least that is what it should be selling themselves as. Fighting CC fraud (and bank transfer fraud) is a challenge as the system was not designed for the digital space.

Do you know of any European based company accepting bitcoins?

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#136

Post by theallan »

mootothemax wrote: post #102
mrkmcknz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I sell a simple SaaS service and asked my accountant one question. Do I charge VAT. Here is his reply: " Vat rules You need to identify B2B and B2C UK, EC and outside EC customers. A vat registration number is usually accepted as evidence of B2B. 1 All sales outside the EC have no vat implications and are ‘outside the scope of vat’. 2 All sales to UK customers (B2B and B2C) have UK vat to apply to them and are sta…

All B2B sales to EC customers have no vat and are ‘outside the scope of UK vat’. Interesting. I was under the impression that EC B2B sales were zero-rated only for companies that are VAT-registered. This is why we grab and validate a VAT number for each EC company that we issue an invoice for. That said, God only knows how this might tie into the living hell which is Polish bureaucracy.

You need to be able to prove that the purchase is B2B rather than B2C, and the easiest way of doing that is to get the buyer's VAT number. You could still do B2B without a VAT number, but you need to be able to prove that the buyer was a business if the tax man asks about it.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#137

Post by jamoes »

descala wrote: post #135
shtylman wrote: post #132

You should look into bitcoin (at least know about it and how it can help you as a merchant). Any payment company that deals with credit cards is not just a payment company but a fraud detection service; at least that is what it should be selling themselves as. Fighting CC fraud (and bank transfer fraud) is a challenge as the system was not designed for the digital space.

Do you know of any European based company accepting bitcoins?

In Germany, there's a bar called Room 77 that only takes bitcoins:

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/01/154140277/berlin-restaurant-ex...

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#138

Post by smagch »

There is a stripe-like startup in Japan. https://webpay.jp

Interestingly, they used to provide a fork of stripe gem for Ruby API. But they gave up on developing on their own. They have stripe compatible ruby API now. https://github.com/keikubo/webpay-ruby

I have no idea why they don't implement on their own.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#139

Post by enraged_camel »

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…

Yeah. Paypal was in that boat early on. They survived only because they were able to solve some very tough fraud problems. Otherwise it would have sunk them. I don't remember who was talking about it - maybe it was Thiel - but he said that at first it didn't seem like a big problem (in terms of how much it was costing the company), but someone at Paypal noticed that it was growing exponentially and if they didn't address it quickly they would not survive.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#140

Post by burgreblast »

I don't understand why you would consider using Braintree in Europe (or anywhere) vs. going to Adyen directly.

The Adyen guys are smart, their technical platform is simple and robust, and unlike the Stripe/Square/Braintree guys, Adyen actually does the processing so they can offer better rates and are suitable for huge volume.

About the only downside is that "At-jien"'s b2b marketing is pretty terrible. They have some faux Apple videos on their site which I think undermines their technical sophistication.

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