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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

#151

Post by zifot »

jusben1369 wrote: post #103
stevoski wrote: post #74

Every time I see an article along these lines, I can't figure out why software startups don't just use a third-party payment processor like FastSpring or Avangate. It makes all these complications go away. Outsource anything you can, especially the things that others can do much better than you because it is their core business. Payment processing is definitely one of those things. I started my software company in Ge…

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.

  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 main difference is that FastSpring acts as a reseller. One of the consequences being that Europe based startup doesn't need to handle VAT - technically it's selling to the US.

  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.
Well, it's not cheap but we have EU regulators to thanks for it - not having to deal with VAT can be worth the price in some cases. And when a company grows, it can optimize in the payments area.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#152

Post by zifot »

phatbyte wrote: post #35

Never heard of Paymill, it seems a very good alternative on Stripe :D Personally I've been using FastSpring and 0 problems so far. However they only work with apps, not webapps and such. So it's good to know we are not left out in Europe.

  Personally I've been using FastSpring and 0 problems so far. 
  However they only work with apps, not webapps and such.
By all means they work with web apps: http://saasy.com (it's a FastSpring brand).

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#153

Post by white_devil »

kybernetyk wrote: post #143

I'm seeing a problem with Paymill: They clearly were built by Rocket to get acquired (possibly by Stripe) in the future. So I'd be careful with integrating their services as those services might be acquired and shut down anytime.

Whoever acquires them is not likely to throw away all the money Paymill's existing customers bring in. It's not like your typical Google acquisition where the original product just dies.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#154

Post by timrogers »

mattmanser wrote: post #73
estel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was definitely one of the concerns that we had when we decided not to implement GoCardless last year for a product. Paying by direct debit is such an unusual process online outside of Paypal and magazine subscriptions, that it's easy to imagine conversions will suffer.

Did you test any of this, or is that just your gut speaking? Some people have funny ideas about how DD works, not realizing it's extremely consumer friendly and much smaller fees than credit cards. I was thinking of offering both as my brief play with GoCardless was very easy to implement.

Tim here - I work at GoCardless.

That's what we recommend. It's super easy to sign up and integrate so it's absolutely worth signing up and just giving it a go. That way you can see whether it works for you and your customers.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#155

Post by melicerte »

We are a startup operating from Belgium and we are using Avangate (http://www.avangate.com/online-payment-solutions/) for our product RBLWatch (https://www.rblwatch.eu/) and a few other things.

It supports recurring fees, and manage the VAT and currency issues for you. It takes those awful banks solutions away. Integration with our PHP code base went very easily. And, in the end, we only issue one invoice.

I definitively recommend.

On the other side, Ogone is just... too 90ties. And it is really hard to deal with subscription and recurring fees.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#157

Post by fastspring »

Silhouette wrote: post #54

Agreed, the effort required to collect payments is absurd for a UK start-up today. I haven't added up how much time we've spent just trying to find a good way to let customers pay us, but I'm quite sure we would have launched long ago if we'd had a simple no-brainer option and spent the rest of the time building our service instead! As it is, we've been looking into options for months and nothing is perfect. For us,…

Re: tax and data protection rules in Europe, over 1/2 of our clients are located outside the US, the majority of those in the EU, and so we have been handling the key EU issues (VAT, euro payment methods & currencies, EU language support, etc.) for some time now.

In terms of cost, there's a major distinction in that FastSpring's pricing of 5.9%+$.95/txn or a flat 8.9% is inclusive of the cost to process credit card and other transaction types globally (typically costs 3-4%+ of every transaction including chargeback fees when you get your own merchant account, assuming getting one is an option for you) because FastSpring is the reseller, the merchant of record. The other reason is the vast functionality FastSpring provides as part of its full-service, all-in-one solution, enabling developers to skip the months or even years of dev work and instead focus on product dev and marketing. You can view the difference here: http://bit.ly/uuklQu

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#158

Post by nhangen »

kristofferR wrote: post #70
nhangen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're absolute masters of market research, delivery and execution. They don't rip off sites (i.e downloading the HTML and changing the logo) or anything unethical like that, they create real competitive businesses from scratch extremely fast without compromising the quality. Ideas aren't worth that much (the majority of their businesses are actually "old" ideas like ecommerce), execution and speed is what matters.…

"They don't rip off sites (i.e downloading the HTML and changing the logo) or anything unethical like that, they create real competitive businesses from scratch extremely fast without compromising the quality."

They come as close as they can. I simply can't trust people like that.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#159

Post by fastspring »

jusben1369 wrote: post #103
stevoski wrote: post #74

Every time I see an article along these lines, I can't figure out why software startups don't just use a third-party payment processor like FastSpring or Avangate. It makes all these complications go away. Outsource anything you can, especially the things that others can do much better than you because it is their core business. Payment processing is definitely one of those things. I started my software company in Ge…

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.

Indeed, FastSpring is the reseller, the merchant of record, so everything gets outsourced.

Re: Taking payments online in Europe in 2013

#160

Post by tedunangst »

enraged_camel wrote: post #139
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 add…

Max Levchin in Founders at Work, iirc.
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